The Moon Will Follow

On a Train in Barcelona

2012-01-29T20:19:00.000-08:00

So you’ve got this problem. You’re a writer. Only, you’re not writing anything. Not at this exact moment in time, you haven’t written anything in months. Oh sure you’ve scribbled a few things here and there, on napkins and the margins of notebook paper during long lectures, but nothing of substance or value. And you think; this can’t be writers block because you’ve had writers block before. This is a whole new animal. Although animal is not the right metaphor because the word ‘animal’ implies fierceness and energy. No, what you’re feeling is a kind of inertia of the spirit, a defeated slumbering of the creative senses. You wouldn’t call it depression because that implies long sleepless nights and copious alcohol consumption (though you’ve done plenty of the latter), and you’re not sad exactly. You love to think of your mind and creative faculties as a giant proverbial clock, which gives you access to phrases such as ‘I’m trying to get my cogs turning’ or ‘I need some coffee to grease the gears’.

But when the famed cogs stop working the only way you know how to describe it is to say that it’s as if a tiny irritant has found its way into the machinery and has brought all machinations to a grating halt. And for the analogy to truly be successful you have the transpose the clock from your skull to your chest cavity, because you feel a great…emptiness has expanded in your chest.

Maybe it was the disemboweling breakup with the girl you thought you were in love with and the subsequent self-consolatory one night stands. But of course you always think you’re in love with them when you’re in the moment, lying nude and satisfied in bed, intertwined like the flesh and sinew of a single organism. It is only afterwards that you realize how tragically past tense life is. Nostalgia becomes as compulsive and fleetingly satisfying as a cigarette. Everything important seems to lie somewhere behind you in the intangible past, and they call into question everything about you that is present. Are you still the kind hearted, fun loving man you once were? Or are you the self centered, bitter asshole that your ex claims you are? You can never be sure. Besides, you were never very good at writing stories in the present tense anyway.

Or maybe it was the stagnant summer with no job but plenty of beer and television with old friends. You understand that the economy is tough and so it’s not an outrageous situation; being able to find a job. Some of your friends managed to get jobs, nothing invigorating, working in coffee shops or as camp councilors, but your summer days still felt a bit listless in comparison. Perhaps this led to your passion drifting into a slumbering state. You’re not sure. All you know is that you feel kind of hollow and nothing seems to make sense, no matter what angle you look at it.

But either way, it doesn’t matter now because it’s fall and you’re going to a new country for a while to continue studying your craft. You’ll make new friends, read new books, maybe meet a new girl, and you are so sure that you will write some new stories, real winners. You think all you need is a change. For a brief moment you feel like your life is once again going to start following the script you envision has been written for it, the one it has derailed from as of late.

So you fly across the ocean away from America and you land in Ireland. But when you get there things don’t happen the way you imagined them. The locals don’t seem that interested in meeting you, and you find that you don’t have the energy to meet them. Everything is similar to home, but with just enough difference to make everything feel slightly off and intimately unfamiliar. The cabs look different and the drivers are friendly and conversational, which after a lifetime of New York taxis makes you feel strangely threatened and suspicious of the driver’s motives. The English, while fundamentally the same as the English you speak, is peppered with unknown slang, giving the dialogues you do hold with locals a fervent tension. You go out to pubs at night and strike up a conversation with someone, talk for a while, buy several drinks, tell a few of jokes, and then never see them again. You find yourself displaying a growing introspective side to the world. The only people you meet that stick around are other Americans and a few Canadians.

When school starts you realize the paradox of studying writing. You thought you were going to come in with a dazzling amount of knowledge from your previous years of study, but all that you brought with you was the stagnation of the summer. You realize that the longer you study stories, especially good ones, the less you understand. Where you were once a talkative and vigorous participator in class, you now find yourself meek and unsure. But worst of all is that you can‘t write a single damn thing. The very idea seems to exhausts you, so you choose to drink and watch movies all night instead.

You decide to take a trip, do some real traveling and see Europe. So you decide to go to Spain. You go with a friend, a Canadian, and you both elect to go to Barcelona. You hop on a plane and a few hours later you’re in lovely Catalonia. You get off the plane and think that if you’re going to find any inspiration as a writer, it’s going to be here. The Moorish spires reaching to the heavens; the long meditative beaches with sand the color of lightly toasted bread; the beautiful Spanish language floating through the air like poetry. They even have Cervantes on their money.

But you soon begin to realize that all of these notions are wrong. The city you imagined and the one you walked through for hours because you couldn’t find the fucking hostel are very different. The western world you thought you left behind has sprung up like a pervasive amusement park. Everywhere you go people speak to you in English, trying to sell you things. You pass a big group of American tourists barhopping. There is graffiti everywhere.

After you find your hostel it is late at night. You walk down to the beach to try and rejuvenate your senses, to take your shoes off and feel the sand in your toes. Within five minutes a man tires to sell you weed. Then another tires to sell you coke. Then a man from Pakistan tries to sell you a beer from a plastic ring six-pack. They circle you like birds of prey, and you wonder bitterly if you walked into the ocean fully dressed whether or not they would follow you. You look down the length of the beach before you flee from the peddlers, and you see the lights of the city and the dark coast locked together in an endless stalemate. You begin to imagine that the whole city around you is nothing but a very convincing graffiti façade of Barcelona, and if you could find a hose powerful enough you could wash it all away and reveal the true city beneath it.

The next day your wallet gets pick pocketed. It is done so skillfully you aren’t even mad at first, you just feel as if you were part of some kind of David Blaine street magic. One moment your wallet is there, and then it’s gone. But then of course when you realize the wallet is not coming back, anger, more at yourself than the thief, rises. Your Canadian friend shakes his head at you and treats you from then on like a patient with mild Alzheimers, asking you every time you leave a building if you have everything you entered with.

Before this trip you had no preconceptions or prejudices about Canadians, but you soon learn that your friend has plenty about you and is not in least bit shy to share them with you. One night at dinner he tells you over a glass of wine, a wine that he took twenty minutes to select, five minutes of which were spent trying to figure out how to say ‘dry’ in Spanish (it’s seco), that he genuinely wished Americans were smarter. When he asked you why you didn’t know how to order wine in Spanish, you tell him that you only took Spanish classes in high school. He rolls his eyes and takes a sip of wine with a contemptuous frown.

Your friend begins to reveal his snobbishness more and more through out the trip. He only wears polo shirts and blazers, and he actually has brought shoe polish with him for his leather boots. Haggard looking men come up to him when both of you are sitting at a café and gesture with a footrest, brush, and container of polish. Your friend waves them off angrily and says to you, “My shoes do not in the least bit look like they need polishing. Why don’t they bother you?” You tell him that it’s probably because you’re wearing sneakers. He rolls his eyes, as if the effort it took to be contemptuous was more than it was worth, lazily with the lids half closed in the Spanish sun.

He drags you around Barcelona to the Picasso museum, the Miró museum, the national museum of art, the cathedral, an obscure tapas restaurant he read about on a food blog, and to every building Gaudi might have even pissed on. He gets you up at seven in the morning to do these things while the other people in your hostel room have the privilege of sleeping off their hang overs.

He says to you as you drag your aching feet from one exhibit to another, “I guarantee you that the other people our age at the hostel aren’t doing this.”

“Getting up at dawn’s hairy crack to see museums?” You ask.

“Getting culture.” He says.

You begin to realize that your friend believes the epitome of a city’s culture lies in the dusty depths of its museums and ancient tombs. He wanders through the Miró and the Picasso exhibits, his eyes narrowing and his lower lip pouting, and you’re not sure if he’s examining the art with laser like precision or taking a particularly painful shit. You wouldn’t be surprised if it were the latter, the abstract expressionist work can have that effect on even the most ironclad bowels. The seemingly chaotic brush strokes and pencil lines forming grotesque dreamscapes and nightmarish figures that gaze out of the canvas with eyes (if you can call them that) full of portent and mystery. But it is not the utter denial, or reimagining, of reality that upsets you. It is your own inability to understand. In that moment everyone around you seems overfull, glutted even, with knowledge, like engorged mosquitos sated on something precious. You search for meaning among Miró’s surrealist star riddled sky and find yourself coming up short.

At the end of the exhibit your friend is taciturn, saying little other than how great it was. He asks you what you thought and you can’t think of a good answer. You say something about the lovely surreal landscapes of Spain, and how you could really see the influence of the Spanish civil war. Your friend just stares at you, so you follow this up by asking him whether or not he thinks the ticket girl was hired because her cleavage was inspiring. He does not laugh. Before you leave he buys a book of Miro’s paintings and flips through them silently, offering no insight or discussion on the topic.

You take the train back to the city center. It is dark now and the people of Barcelona board the train with you on the way home from work or from looking for work. You can feel the routine of their lives thrumming around you, making the drifting, aimless nature of your own more obvious. They speak Spanish or Catalan with each other and the words float around you unattainable. You look around and think that these people are where they’re supposed to be, and seem to you to also be where they want to be. For the most part they know who they are and they are in a place they understand. They are also with the people they want to be with, and at this thought you glare at your friend seated across from you, flipping through the book of Miro’s paintings silently. You look out the window at the city passing by and you feel like you did wandering through the maze of abstract art; utterly alone. Surrounded by a language you did not know and unable to use the words of your native tongue the way you once did. It has been transmuted into a language of commerce with no other use.

The train passes into a tunnel and the dark window suddenly reflects your own face back at you. For a moment you stare into your own eyes, trying to escape the confines of your mind and see yourself as other people must see you, and for a moment you feel like an outsider in your own body. Then the train exits the tunnel and your face disappears into the vast landscape of the city again, swallowed up by the uneven mass of buildings.

A man walks up the aisle of the train and positions himself in front of the sliding doors. He is a thin white man with sweat pants sliding halfway down his backside and a loose red sweatshirt hanging from his thin frame. He carries a boom box under his arm, which he sets at his feet. He looks around the train and then begins to address everyone in the car with fluid and articulate Spanish, speaking animatedly. He then repeats what he said in English,

“Ladies and Gentlemen I am a man with out a job, so I thought I’d come to the train today to make rap for you all because I love making music. I hope you enjoy it.”

Your friend looks around irritably. The man hits a button on the stereo with his foot and music fills the train. The man begins to rap in Spanish, and although you have no idea what he is saying, the sound of the flowing words is beautiful and smooth, like the feeling of a river stone that’s been carefully rounded by the current. They animate his whole body, making his limbs dance and gesticulate beneath his loose clothing, almost like a bird trying to fly with an insufficient wingspan. You suddenly think back to the nighttime beaches, the peddlers wandering down the dark coast, lost and inescapably at home, praying for a reprieve, leaving trails in the sand like long brush strokes in a foreign tongue understood by no one. They are a people doing what they had to do, and this is a man doing what he loved to do. Neither has another option.

When the man finishes his song he walks down the center aisle with a little black coin purse held imploringly out. Your friend doesn’t lift his head from the book. You drop several Euros in the pouch and the man smiles and thanks you in Spanish. Your not exactly sure what the phrase he used was, but you understand it all the same.

Bad Moon Rising

2012-01-25T18:22:00.000-08:00

Bad Moon Rising

By David Calbert

The scene has been set time and time again: a desolate stretch of moorland surveyed by the solitary burning eye of the full moon, summoning up mist from the churning soil like ghosts not yet gone form this earth. A man, poor young wretch of a city dweller, brought to supplicant knees by the boot heel of an indifferent God who will not be banished by electric light. The man is split by forces within and without him, his very soul clawing monstrously to the surface until at long last he emits a howl, damned and utterly free.

The Legend of the Werewolf has been a powerful and pervasive metaphor for the inner animal of desire and violence in humanity that refuses to fade into obsolescence. Unlike the vampire, which overthrows social convention with its sleek and sensual seduction, the werewolf is raw and ancient power, like ore ripped from the belly of the earth still molten and dripping. A metaphor as complete as this, once revealing itself on the (ironically) silver screen has been one of the most relied upon tropes in the horror genre.

The Rules

The Werewolf first made its debut in Hollywood in a film called The Werewolf of London. Directed by Stuart Walker and staring Henry Hull as the infected Dr. Glendon, this premier film tells the story of a young botanist in search of a rare flower (mariphasa Lupina Lumina) in Tibet that only blooms under the light of the full moon. Dr. Glendon finds the flower only to be bitten by a strangely humanoid wolf. Dr. Glendon returns from the wilderness of Tibet to London with both a specimen of the flower and a terrible curse. Then the classic tale of the Werewolf unfolds. Unlike the later, arguably more successful 1941 The Wolf Man, the original Hollywood werewolf movie does not indict the curse as something satanic or even supernatural in nature. Rather, the curse is aligned with the mysteries of nature and evolution. In the beginning when Dr. Glendon is searching for the valley where the Mariphasa is supposed to grow, he runs into a priest who warns them by saying, “I respect some of the superstitions of others. Often they are founded in facts.”

This alignment with the werewolf and nature is further cemented later when we see the doctor’s array of exotic plants, ranging from the factual Venus Flytrap to a fictional plant of monstrous size, all waving tendrils and gnashing at frog flesh. All of this untamed nature is in stark contrast with the sophisticated gentry of the London folk strolling past them as if they were at the zoo. The werewolf in this film could be said to be a battle between the old world and the new just as much as it is a battle between good and evil. What is evil but the condemned laws and practices of the old by the new? The element of devilry and magic was not introduced until 1941, when Lon Chaney Jr. see’s a pentagram on the palm of his next victim, beloved Evelyn Ankers.

But the lasting role of both The Werewolf of London and The Wolfman was to give the world stone tablets inscribed with the laws of lycanthropy to be followed and later to be beautifully shattered. The films did not share every rule about the werewolf, but where the two overlap is where we find the rock foundation of the werewolf legend in Hollywood.

· The curse of the werewolf is transferred by the bite of another werewolf.

There are of course a plethora of supposed methods for becoming a werewolf in legend (being born on Christmas eve, drinking water from a wolf print, having sex with a werewolf and living, magic wolf pelt girdle, or making a deal with the devil) but the most popularly portrayed is the bite. It’s more than just an infection or curse; it’s a transference of violence and pain from one human to the next to the next to the next etc. It’s a wonderfully visceral symbol for the inherited and inherent evil in mankind, closer to original sin than to rabies.

· A werewolf will go after people its human counterpart knows and loves.

In Werewolf of London, Dr. Glendon is warned by Dr. Yogami, a fellow botanist and cursed man, that “The werewolf instinctively seeks to kill the thing it loves best.” In both films the werewolf is stopped right before it kills its beloved. The metaphor not only stands for inhibited desires and violence, but also for the human tendency to destroy the thing that is most precious to it; whether that thing is a spouse, the planet, or even oneself. Something in the heart of every human being wants to gut the world just to see what comes spilling out.

· Silver is the only thing that can kill a werewolf.

This rule was only established in The Wolf Man but is so commonly used that it merits a mention on this list. While it was the silver head of a walking stick that was used to kill the beast in 1941, the silver bullet has been the go to method of lupine liquidation. The only explanation as to why werewolves are vulnerable to silver is that silver is a pure metal that is said to cleanse evils and toxins in the blood.

· The transformation is triggered by the light of the full moon.

More strongly cemented in The Werewolf of London, this rule is the most elemental aspect of the werewolf legend. The cycle of the moon is something that has mystified humanity since we had eyes to gaze heavenward. It is natures great, unchanging clock and all other life must dance to the rhythm of its beat. Naturally the full moon would bring out the wildest part of us.

The Transformation

The transformation scene is probably the most important part of any werewolf film, the make or break point, the deciding factor of whether the film will be remembered as laughable or truly horrific. To date, the most successful film on this front has been An American Werewolf in London, a 1981 British horror comedy directed by John Landis and staring David Naughton. Without the aid of CGI, make up artist Rick Baker created a game changing transformation scene that influenced werewolf movies for decades to come. The only other film that comes close to the nauseatingly satisfying transformation scene is the 1981 American film The Howling directed by Joe Dante. Rick Baker was originally hired to do special effects for The Howling, but left to do An American Werewolf in London.

While the transformation scene in The Howling is grotesque, horrific, and ultimately gets the job done, it is decidedly clumsier that its rival and, frankly, fatally long winded. The use of air filled sacs adhesively attached to the actors face and chest were used to produce the illusion of his bones and sinew being rearranged under his skin. But the camera lingers too long on each stage of the scene, and allows the audience to realize the ridiculousness of the make up, at times wondering if the character is changing into a terrible beast or merely suffering from a severe case of tumescent blisters.

The transformation scene in An American Werewolf in London is unparalleled in its horror and skin splitting agony. We hear the bones snapping and jaggedly reforming within David Naughton’s sweat soaked naked body. His screams of pure agony drop by decibels as his larynx and trachea tear to allow for the lamentations of a wolf. We see hair erupting, his face elongating into a snout, his palms stretching and forming into paws. It is impossible to tell with out a doubt where the actor begins and the make up ends.

Another transformation scene deserves a mention here, both for its originality and for its symbolic implications. The Canadian film is Ginger Snaps directed by John Fawcett, starring Emily Perkins and Katharine Isabelle as two teenage sisters at odds with themselves and the world. The transformation does not take place within a single scene, but through out the entire movie. After Katharine Isabelle’s character is bitten by a deformed wolf-like creature she begins to slowly change, both physically and mentally, into a similar monster. This film is unique in its treatment of the werewolf in several ways. The first is because of the aforementioned length of the transformation, but also because of the irrevocable shift into primal. Once the characters in this film (which merited two others; a sequel and a prequel) turn into beast they do not change back with the dawn of morning light. The second reason is that while the majority of werewolf movies feature a male protagonist dealing with the manifestation of his repressed sexual and violent impulses, this film reverses that and claims the werewolf as something for the female.

Multicultrual feminist writer Gloria Anzaldúa writes in her book Borderlands: La Frontera that “Humans fear the supernatural, both the undivine (the animal impulses such as sexuality, the unconscious, the unknown, the alien) and the divine (the superhuman, the god in us). Culture and religion seek to protect us from these two forces. The female, by virtue of creating entities of flesh and blood in her stomach (she bleeds every month but does not die), by her virtue of being in tune with nature’s cycles, is feared.”[1]

In Ginger Snaps the werewolf becomes a metaphor for budding female sexuality and the taboo placed on it by a male dominated society. Instead of the full moon we have the menstrual cycle. The first pangs of lust coincide with the first desire to kill. Instead of a silver bullet we have a knife wielded by a sister complicit in denying womanhood. This incredibly complicated and sometimes bitterly sardonic metaphor is packaged in a film that still manages to be one hell of a horror movie.

More Things In Heaven and Earth

The werewolf has had a long and distinguished career in Hollywood, as well as in literature. Like the vampire, it is a metaphor that can at times appear tired and overused, and it doesn’t help that industries like Twilight have taken the werewolf and pulled an Abercrombie and Fitch sweater vest over its head and snapped a bejeweled leash to its collar. But the mythos persists, and is one that we can never really grasp in its entirety, because it is so intimately apart of us as a species. It’s like trying to reach through the mirror and grab ourselves by the throat. We will always see that full moon in the sky and hope that somewhere out there is a beast, running and howling freely for eternity.

[1] Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands: La Frontera (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Book Company, 1987), 17.

Wake

2011-07-27T17:11:00.000-07:00

The East

Jerry liked to get up early and walk the length of the beach before the sun rose above the waves, glorifying in the nebulous gray fog that brought his mind to a primordial calm. He would roll his jeans up to his knees and unbutton his shirt to expose his chest to the morning chill. He had quit smoking over ten years ago and hadn’t touched a cigarette since, not even to pass one to his old friend Mort when his hands were busy. Jerry believed in a stern will, and he’d been able to quit fairly easily with out any relapses. But these morning walks through the amorphous vapor brought back the ghosts of craving. The fog reminded him of the threads of smoke rolling off the tip of cigarettes that he used to try and divine meaning from when stumped at his computer. It reminded him of younger days.

Jerry had once heard Ray Bradbury say that the best time to write was early in the twilight hours of the morning, when your state of consciousness was still hazy and muddled. He said that in this state old metaphors smashed like atoms in your mind and gave birth to new ones. Big bang. Doppler effect. Jerry had taken to walking the morning fog, imagining himself to be in the mind of some groggy deity, searching for a fresh metaphor.

Later that morning, after coffee, bagel, and an array of pills that made Jerry feel old, he sat down at his computer and began writing. He got in a solid hour and a half, keys giving way eagerly under his fingers like the soft flesh of a woman’s stomach. He had some pain around noon and had to stop and take a pill. It made him woozy so he called it a day for writing. He printed out what he had managed to get down and shut his computer off.

Mort called and asked if it would be agreeable for him to come over for a visit. Jerry said it would be and shortly after Mort was rapping softly on the front door of Jerry’s beachfront house.

“Afternoon King.”

Mort liked to call Jerry King after the prolific horror writer, the only writer that Mort could name after picking up one of his books in a bus station. Jerry was not offended by the comparison, he actually enjoy the man’s work regardless of the abhorrence that the elitist academics in universities treated him with. He was more upset that the only book Mort had bothered to read had been picked up in a bus station.

“To you as well, come on in, Mort.”

Jerry’s one steady friend came in carrying a metal pot with tin foil around the lid. Mort was a Boston man, burly shoulders, a don’t-fuck-with-me gait. But his face was kindly, and Jerry liked to think that it was the salt in the ocean mist that had eroded his city hardness. He had moved to Cape Cod to help his mother maintain her dignity while she died, and now lived in her old house, spending his days working at the restaurant his family had owned, catering to tourists and the few loyal natives.

He put the metal basin on the kitchen counter and said, “Some left over clam chowder, light on the onion and garlic so it goes down easy.”

“Thanks Mort. Can I offer you a beer?”

“That’d be nice.”

Jerry got Mort a beer from the fridge and they went to the back porch facing the sea and sat in the rocking chairs.

“How you feeling today? You were pretty green last time.”

“Fine up until around noon. I got some words down though.”

Jerry held up the pieces of paper he held in his hand. Mort asked,

“Is it done?”

“No.”

“Then why did you print it out? You’re making some guy with a chainsaw work over time.”

“I never pegged you as an environmentalist Mort.”

“I feel for the guy who is just trying to get home to his wife and kids, has to stay late cause of you.”

Mort took a swig of beer, his other hand tapping the leg of his jeans softly. He never smoked around Jerry, but it was always easy to tell when he wanted to. Jerry smiled as he tenderly smoothed the paper across his lap.

“I don’t trust cyberspace or silicone storage. There is something ghostly about it, something that looks flashy and bright but is so damned fleeting. The other day I was writing and my computer battery was low. When I got up to piss I accidentally yanked the cord out and the screen went black. Lost five pages. It’s all just knowledge on life support, gone the minute you pull the plug. I like my words to be tangible, real, lasting.”

Mort scratched his stubble and took another drink. He belched and said, “But paper ain’t no more lasting that stuff on the computer. Just because you can hold onto to something doesn’t mean it’s gonna last forever. One time back in bean town, I was working on an assembly line in a brewery. Awful work. It almost ruined beer for me, but a job is a job, ya’know? So end of the week, paychecks come around and I get my envelope and get the hell out for the weekend. But it was winter and I swear the minute I step outside the wind takes my pay check right out of my hand. It goes rolling like a tumble weed across the street and before I can get to it, bam, right down a gutter. I’ll tell you something King, I never saw that money again in my life.”

Jerry was laughing so hard that he started to cough. Mort looked on with a smile, drinking his beer. Jerry cleared his throat and said, “Mort, this is why I love your visits.”

“You sure it’s not cause I’m the only one comes and visits you anyway?”

“There was a reason I never got married or had kids my friend. I hate people.”

Mort snorted and said, “let me see them pages.”

Jerry handed them over saying, “This goes against every writerly instinct in my body, but to hell with it.”

He handed the pages to Mort.

The West

Outside the apartment window was a pear tree. Its white blossoms were almost iridescent in the street light, like so many flashing eyes bearing witness to the slow progress of time. The tree’s roots dug deep into a small hill, made pronounced by the relative flatness of the surrounding park. To consider the origins of such a tree was to try and map out hundreds of years of might-haves and just-so’s. If the quiet sliding of the great tectonic plates had been persuaded to move in either direction a mere centime by the churning heart of the earth, the mound might not have arisen. If the seed from the pear tree’s mother had not ridden on a north bound wind soft enough it may have landed in the churning waves of the sea, or in some uninhabitable patch of rock or sand, then its consummation with the fertile mound would never have happened. The chaotic whirlwind of possibilities, down to the endless dance of atoms and electrons, were all past tense for Jeremiah as he sat at the apartment window to smoke and contemplate the tree. And this sentiment he found tragic, forever living after the fact, after every fact, riding the tide of might-be’s and just-might’s. Living in the wake of creation.

Jeremiah was living the postgraduate bachelor life in a small town not too far from the university. He was taking baby steps, he told himself, away from the place of his education. He got a job at a local bookstore and spent his nights in front of his computer trying to write. He was young, and when the seed of an idea hit him, he would scramble to find paper or if possible his computer. An anxiety would wash over him when his mind clutched these seeds, a fear that if he didn’t write it down soon it would melt back into the cerebral fluid from whence it arose. He had not lived enough yet or had the discipline to know that these things came from somewhere deeper than the water inside his skull and that if these seeds had a strong enough desire to be born, they wouldn’t go anywhere.

The owner of the bookstore was an old Japanese woman named Maxine Hong who smelled of old jasmine and wore her hair in a stiff white bun atop her head. She was mostly monosyllabic in her intercourses with Jeremiah, but kind in a rigid sort of way. When Jeremiah shelved books in the wrong place, she would shake her head, remove the book with delicate fingers and beckon him follow her to the right shelf. When he got it down, she left him mostly alone, spending the day in the back room doing crosswords.

When the young woman came into the store, leading the man eagerly, Jeremiah knew they were in love. At least they shared something old and intimate. The woman had a dark complexion. Hair like a midnight river and a lightweight smile. She moved in a way that suggested she knew how to quiet the places in men that were wont to run wild, even if she didn’t know it, and she had a face that made unconscious promises. She had the face of every lover Jeremiah had passed endless nights with, but shrouded in some new shadow. The man was young, handsome, and calm in the way only someone who is not alone can be.

“Can I help you?” Jeremiah asked.

She came bouncing up to him, her lover in tow.

“Yes I’m looking for a book.” She said. She gave him the title and author and he looked it up in the computer. The store had a copy and he went to retrieve it. She followed behind him but the young man stayed at the register.

“Did you just start working here?” She asked, seeming to pull books out at random, flipping through a few pages, and inserting them back into the shelves. He was down on one knee looking for her book. He watched her investigation of the books around her and she gave him a sense of dangerous carelessness. Opening the pages of someone’s story with no thought of the consequences, inviting them into her life with out considering the chaos that might ensue. She was a beautiful child shaking a rain stick, blind to the gathering nimbuses.

“Yes,” he said, “I just moved here and thought it best to work among family.”

She looked at him with a raised eyebrow and said, “You’re related to Mrs. Hong?”

Jeremiah stood up and said, “No, I mean these.”

He handed her the book. She looked at him curiously and he said, “Sorry, bad joke.”

Even though he was acting like someone who had recently been lobotomized, she still met his gaze with her own. Her eyes were dark little cosmoses, stars folding in upon themselves to make dark orbs of infinity. He felt he should cease eye contact, pluck his eyes out as Oedipus had, the words event horizon rising to the top of his consciousness. But there was a gravity he could not fight.

“I don’t get it,” she said, “are you one fourth wood pulp?”

Jeremiah laughed despite being the butt of her joke and heard himself say, “No, I’m a writer.”

The little voice in his head, the one that sat atop his ego and shouted when it felt that it’s steed was bucking too wildly, shrieked at him. This was the voice that clucked its tongue when ever he said anything that sounded like the dribble that came out of coffee house artistes who told you what medium they created in before they told you their names.

Jeremiah eagerly tacked on the end of that, ”Well, I mean that I studied writing. I’m not published or anything.”

He felt himself blush. But she smiled widely and said, “How exciting. Well I’m Marcel, but I much prefer Marcy.”

He gave her his name and they shook hands softly. Her skin was smooth and later, when he put his hand to his cheek it smelt of clover.

Jeremiah found her book, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and rung her up at the cash register. The young man, who Marcy introduced as Brian, paid for her in bills he counted from his wallet. Before they left Marcy asked, “Have you been to Mort’s Tavern?”

Jeremiah had passed the place, an old Irish bar on the main street in town, on his way to work, but had never been inside. He imagined that it smelled like smoke and sweat. He told Marcy that he had not.

“You should go with us there tonight, meet some more of the locals and get a taste of the night life around here. It’s not much but Brian’s plays a mean game of billiards if you’re up to the challenge.”

Brian gave a curt shake of his head and a small smile, either denying the claim out of humility or challenging him to prove his woman wrong, Jeremiah wasn’t sure. He heard himself saying that yes, that sounded nice and then that he’d be there at eight o’clock.

They left, Marcy smiling and waving back at him, Brian giving him another curt nod. Jeremiah stood at the register for a moment, absorbing what had just unfolded. The words event horizon rose to the top of his mind once again, but quieter this time, with less urgency. He went back to where Maxine was playing cross words and asked if he could have an extra half hour for lunch so he could run home. She nodded silently, scribbling with her pencil and muttering incoherent letters to herself like a low volume radio tuned between two channels.

Jeremiah went home that afternoon and began writing about an old man dying by the sea, the pear tree whispering in the noon breeze.

The East

When Jerry’s alarm went off he found that he felt too sick to go on his morning walk on the beach. When this realization rendered him prostrate in bed again a lead ball of dread settled into his belly. He supposed that a man who had led a more sociable or congenial life might have a venerable grey wife lying next to him, whispering words of comfort, but that path had not been laid out for him by virtue of the parts he was made up of. He was a rough man whose acute observations of the world and of the people in it had sentenced him to a mostly solitary life. He had learned to bear his own boulders.

When Jerry found strength enough in his legs he stumbled into the kitchen wrapped in a blanket to take his medicine. He then managed to make it outside to his back porch facing the sea and sunk into one of his chairs. He watched as the shore grew brighter, and the rhythmic crash of the waves soothed him a little. He wondered if he sat by the sea continuously, how many of oceans exclamations he would hear before the end.

As if summoned by his thoughts a figure appeared to his left on the beach, small and at a distance, but walking towards him out of the morning fog like a pillar of smoke. For a brief moment Jerry wasn’t sure that what he was seeing was real, thinking that it might be some side effect of the medicine. The figure seemed to be merely a transparent shade the color of sand and fog, a human shape cut from the horizon. But as it got closer Jerry saw that it was a woman in a light summer dress, her white hair pulled into a tight bun atop her head. Jerry made no protests as she approached his house and when she began to mount the steps to his porch, the smell of old jasmine caressed his nose.

She sat in the chair across from him, the chair where Mort had previously sat drinking a beer and calling him King. She had a serious, stoic face and incredibly sharp eyes. She gave him an appraising look but said nothing, simply sat with her hands in her lap. In one hand she had a rolled up newspaper and a pencil.

“Hello.” Jerry ventured.

She nodded but still said nothing. Under normal circumstances Jerry would have been irked at the intrusion of his privacy, and Jerry secretly liked to think of himself as the old man that kids warned each other about, admonishing any peers with intent to trespass. But something about this woman subdued that impulse in him, and everything about him seemed to relax under her stare, as if he was suspended in ether. Except the lead ball of terror somewhere deep in his belly, down near his groin. It seemed to vibrate in her presence. The effect was dizzying and Jerry wasn’t sure if he had fallen asleep or was about to be sick. He needed her to talk.

“What can I do for you?” He asked, almost desperate.

The woman gave a quick shake of her head and said, “Nothing. I don’t act. I watch.” Her voice was soft and curt, as if the sensation of words escaping her lips was unpleasant or frightening. She spoke like someone who was hiding.

“I don’t understand.”

“You do.”

Jerry was suddenly cold and pulled the blanket closer. The woman gazed at him intently.

“Do you live around here? Is your house on the beach?” Jerry tried in an effort to shrug the feeling of a bug stuck on a pin. But she just shook her head and Jerry felt the dizzy spell pick up inside his head and he leaned back in the chair. His vision began to strobe and he again saw the woman as transparent shades.

“I feel sick.” He murmured. The woman leaned forward and said, “Liver cancer. Localized. Your body has not decided if it will become metastatic yet. Still being born.”

The lead ball inside of Jerry sent a current up his spine, giving him a moment of terror born clarity from the dizziness.

“Who are you?”

The woman crinkled her paper as if the question made her extremely uncomfortable. She said almost reluctantly, “If you are a gadfly, then I am hemlock.”

Jerry saw images of sickle blades cutting through screaming stalks of wheat, of long tunnels the color of a moonless night, and he thought he finally understood. He was not a man of faith or of metaphysics, but the truth that his eyes bore him seemed empirical. He let the blanket fall to his lap.

“Are you death?”

The woman, as if struck by inspiration, unfolded her newspaper and brought the tip of the pencil to her tongue. She began to scribble on the paper and Jerry could hear her mutter softly.

“Deus…ex…machina…”

Jerry leaned forward and saw that she was filling in a downward column of a crossword puzzle. She folded the paper again and looked up satisfied.

She said, “Phrase derived from ancient Greek theatre where actors playing a god were suspended by cables above the stage.”

Jerry clenched his fists and was aware that his palms were sweaty. He said, “I don’t understand.”

The woman said, “Sometimes the words just fall into place with the smallest breath of air, and sometimes it’s turning lead into gold. An act of alchemy. But it’s always best to write them down when they come; one can’t always play the dream catcher. You may call me Lady Hong.”

Lady Hong sat back, seemingly content with her catch, and looked out to the raw horizon of the sea. Jerry found that he was trembling slightly and a thin film of sweat had broken out on his forehead. Somewhere far away his heart was beginning to pick up the tempo.

“Please,” was all he could say, “please.”

Lady Hong spoke and her tone was matter of fact and calm. “You are going to die. You’ve been dying every moment since the day you were conceived. It is best not to dwell on it, a splitting headache is no legacy to leave.”

Jerry tried to take in breath to ask her what the hell she was talking about, but found that his lungs would take none in, as if they had been filled with water. His rapid heartbeat sent painful ripples across the lake in his chest that seemed to be expanding. His vision became the tint of a photograph left in the sun too long. He leaned forward and felt the smooth wooden planks of his porch floor slap his face as if he were a slippery pink thing that refused to shriek. He faintly heard Lady Hong whispering, “You are born in the thrall of a dreadful event horizon that fills you with the breath of dust.”

The world slipped into darkness.

The West

Mort’s Tavern had a capacity to house enough customers and smoke that every person had a ghostly other, a silhouette given life by the dim lighting. It was rumored that the proprietor allowed smoking because the bar was where an off duty cop often came to take the edge off the day, and let on when cops might just stroll by and take a peek inside.

When Jeremiah arrived promptly at eight o’clock he did not expect the bar to be as full as it was. He felt lost in a sea of people until he saw Marcy, standing on a chair near the billiards table, waving ecstatically at him. Her face was dark with flush and Jeremiah guessed that she had been there much longer than he expected.

When Jeremiah made his way through the people to where she was, she came up to him excitedly and handed him a glass of beer, spilling some foam over the side in the process.

“I’m glad you made it.” She said and clinked her almost empty glass against his, spilling more beer down the side. Jeremiah laughed and drank the toast with her and said he was glad too. But in reality he felt on edge and wasn’t sure why. He kept looking over his shoulder and chewing on his lower lip, things he did when he felt nervous or exposed. Everything was foreign.

Marcy introduced him to several people, men and women who lived in town, whose names quickly dissipated through his skull and into the smoky atmosphere of the bar. All Jeremiah could remember about them the next morning was that they seemed like nice people who never left their hometown. Brian was at the pool table, engaged in a game with an older man with a white beard. When Marcy brought Jeremiah to Brian’s attention he looked up briefly, mutter a greeting, and went back to the game. Later Jeremiah would realize that Brian was a very serious pool player and nothing, not even the pope hula-hopping naked, could distract him from a game. But that night Jeremiah was convinced that he perturbed Brian by being there that night, specifically by the fact that he was there with Marcy playing hostess. It was then that Jeremiah realized why he felt on edge. It was because of Marcy. Not because Jeremiah was attracted to Marcy; he was sure that even Brain’s best friends were as attracted to her and probably much more expressive about it to his face. No, it was the fact that Jeremiah expected something to happen between them, and not just expected, but believed it completely. And somewhere deep with in him he had acquiesced to that belief the moment he had met her.

After the realization Jeremiah tried to be as inconspicuous as possible while getting as drunk as possible, two goals which proved to be at odds with each other. After several beers Jeremiah found himself in conversation with a young lady that Marcy had introduced him to earlier, talking about their respective colleges. She had gone to a small college not far from home and had majored in political science. Jeremiah said that he always thought the name of that major paradoxical because the only scientific method a politician knows is the method of cutting up lines. She laughed and played with her hair through out their conversation and Jeremiah kept taking large gulps of beer. The woman was a thin blonde and if Jeremiah had learned anything in college it was that an infinite amount of time could be wasted on thin blondes.

After a while Marcy found him and dragged him to the pool table claiming that Brian wanted to play a game of pool. Jeremiah doubted that the initiative had been Brian’s but when Marcy leaned close and said, “She is a huge slut” about the thin blonde, Jeremiah laughed and allowed himself to be pulled to the pool table where Brian was waiting pensively.

Jeremiah broke and didn’t get a single ball in. Brian got the seven ball in and proceeded to shoot half of the solids in a single turn before missing. Jeremiah got in several stripes but he purposely didn’t play his best, perhaps out of his guilt about Marcy. Brains victory came quickly, and Jeremiah accepted one rematch, which he again quickly lost, and declined a third try. He retreated to the bar.

The night wore on. Jeremiah continued to drink at the bar, making small talk with Mort as he shuffled behind the bar, a heavy set man who looked grave, but was willing to light your cigarette for you if you didn’t have a light. Jeremiah, who had quit smoking a year before, ask Mort if he might borrow a cigarette from him. Jeremiah attempted to sound good natured but just sounded more drunk. Mort gave him one anyway and flicked his lighter in front of the tip.

“Thank you Mort,” Jeremiah said. “You’ve got a great fucking name, you know that? Mort. That a gentlemen’s name. Royalty. Mort’s a name that’ll out-last them all.”

Mort smirked and brought Jeremiah another beer. The thin blonde found him again and tried to reignite their conversation. She got him to buy her a whiskey sour, and he agreed because he didn’t want to be rude. She even put her hand on his knee under the bar. But when she saw that he was unresponsive to her advances, she finished her drink and wandered away. Jeremiah felt someone again occupy the seat next to him and was not surprised to see that it was Marcy.

“I told you she was a slut,” She said, “I don’t think she’s paid for a single drink all night.”

Jeremiah laughed and said, “Well that hardly seems fair. Tell you what; I’ve got about fifteen dollars left of my paychecks for the next two years, how about I buy the next round. To hell with student loans.”

Marcy flashed her teeth and agreed, but not before an almost imperceptible glance back at Brian, who was so engrossed in the billiards table he hadn’t even realized she’d left. Mort brought them their drinks and they clinked them together as Jeremiah said, “To you, for showing me the best night life this town has to offer, and for giving me the chance to wake up with a crippling hang over.”

They drank. Marcy leaned forward, her hand on her cheek contemplatively. Jeremiah tried not to look at the soft swell of her breast beneath her blouse. The V cut was tantalizingly low, but not so low as to kill the faculties of imagination.

She said, “So, you’re a writer huh? What’s that like?”

Jeremiah shrugged and said, “It has it’s benefits. For starters, I have an excuse for not being able to pay the rent.”

“What are you writing about right now?”

Jeremiah narrowed his eyes in concentration. So many words, normally willing to stand in line patiently and form cohesive thoughts, found the surface of his consciousness slick and rather hazardous, falling into chaos. It would have taken an act of alchemy or extreme labor to arrange them into something worth being said, so Jeremiah took the reductive route.

He said, “Death.”

The sudden grimness of his voice made them both laugh. He let Marcy think that the self-mockery was intentional. She leaned in and asked, “Are you afraid of it?”

Without hesitation. “Yes.”

She stirred her drink as she looked at him and asked, “Are you religious? I assume your parents were, giving you a name like Jeremiah. ”

Jeremiah smirked and said, “Very observant. Yes, my parents were catholic, but they stopped going to church after a while. I think the rituals began to tire them out.”

Marcy smiled slyly and said, “You didn’t answer my question.”

Jeremiah said, “You noticed.”

“You don’t want to answer?”

“Talking about my beliefs when it comes to religion makes me uncomfortable.”

Marcy said, “I’m sorry, I only ask because I wanted to know if you believe in an afterlife. Such things ease the fear of death, I’m told.”

Jeremiah finished his drink and pushed the glass away from him, positioning himself so that he faced Marcy completely and any words that he spoke could only be received by her. Before he spoke, the image of the pear tree outside his apartment came to his mind, and the white petals drifted the rest of the night in the swill of his consciousness.

He said, “If this world was indeed created by a supreme being, and this is the best he can do, then I have major doubts that he can handle an afterlife. Sometimes I think he’s so far behind that he’s still making this place, right in front of our eyes. That we’re only mere moment in the past from the edge of creation, like living on the edge of some tattered cloth that is still being sewn together from yarn by a three fingered gypsy. So much for a grand plan.”

Several emotions at once crept onto Marcy’s face, overlaid on top of one another, making them impossible to separate and read. She was quiet for a minute as she finished her drink, her dark hair hanging close to her face, further cloaking it in shadow. Finally she spoke.

“When I was young I had a dog. A mutt with mismatched eyes and awful breath, but I loved her with all my heart. My mother saved her from the pound and gave her to me on my second birthday. My dad left us before I can remember, so my mom didn’t have a lot of time to spend with me, working full time, but she always showed that she loved me. I named her Bell, because I wanted to be a princess then. Bell followed me everywhere and did everything I told her. Sit. Roll over. And she fetched faster than any of my friends dogs. One day I threw a tennis ball across the street for her to fetch. It was dusk and I guess the car didn’t see Bell. We buried her in the garden, and I still put flowers there when I visit my parents.”

Jeremiah placed his hand over hers. She did not pull away. She said, “Last night I had a dream about her and she was alive again in the dream, mismatched eyes and bad breath. I spent to whole night with her until I woke up in the morning. I like to think that the afterlife is like that, woven out of memories. When you die you remember everything again, like it was new.”

When she was done she looked into Jeremiah’s eyes, waiting, watching him for a reaction. He felt the gravity again, and thought oh no, this is it. Her head was tilted, her beautiful river of hair swept off her cheek, her eyes looking into his. He could smell her scent; clover and the sky before a hard rain.

He heard himself say, “You are so beautiful. I pray that it lasts forever.”

Somewhere in the back of the bar the older man with the white beard, having imbibed more than is recommended for someone with a foul temper, struck another patron in the jaw, beginning an explosive brawl, shattering glasses and knocking over stools. Every head in the bar turned to look, including Brian, except Jeremiah and Marcy. They were quietly embracing at the bar, Jeremiah’s thumb gently caressing her cheeks to catch the tears.

Event Horizon.

The East

Darkness, submerged in a soundless womb of nothing. Then something shifted, slid into place like a sword into its hilt. It was not a color you could find in crayon box but the word red seemed to fit. Jerry realized that it was pain, and with the realization came the cognizance of a body, his body, on top of something soft. He shifted and heard the whisper of sheets, and then the beeping of some machine. Then a voice calling to him:

“Hey King, you awake? Jesus, where’s the damn nurse?”

Jerry opened his eyes and saw that he was in a hospital room, lying in bed. Mort had come across the room from the visitor chair in the corner and was looking down at him with a combination of relief and worry. His eyes kept flicking to the doorway, trying to catch a nurse or a doctor walking by.

“What happened?” Jerry asked. He tried to sit up and the pain rippled down his body and he groaned.

“Don’t try and move,” Mort said, “You had a stroke.”

He paused and put a rough hand on Jerry’s forearm.

“I’m sorry king, the doctor said that it’s getting worse.”

“The lady.”

“What?”

Jerry was having a hard time getting his voice louder than a harsh whisper. His throat felt dry, but he went on.

“I saw a woman on my back porch right before. She said her name was Lady Hong. She came out of the fog.”

Jerry crumpled his eyebrows and said, “No, that’s not right. She was the fog.”

Mort looked seriously worried but didn’t leave Jerry’s side.

“I’m not sure about that,” he said softly, not wanted to upset Jerry. “People sometimes see things when they have strokes. The brain goes haywire and can make you see or do just about anything.”

“When I was with her I didn’t feel real, didn’t feel solid. My being felt like it was being unraveled.”

Jerry, for the first time since waking up, turned and looked directly into Mort’s eyes. Jerry looked old, lying there in the hospital bed in a white gown, and something that Mort had not seen in his eyes before in such abundance; fear.

“Mort, I think she was death.”

“Now that’s just nonsense.”

Jerry turned away and looked up at the white hospital ceiling. The blankness of it gave him a strange empty comfort.

“Deus ex Machina.”

“What’s that? What are you saying?” Mort asked.

“It means god out of the machine. It’s a plot device for when characters are faced with an insurmountable obstacles. Lady Hong mentioned it.”

Mort, finally deciding that Jerry was stable enough to be left alone said, “I’m going to find you a doctor King, he’ll help you sort all this out.”

Jerry put a hand on Mort’s arm, silently asking him to stay. Mort came back to his bedside. Jerry listened to the EKG machine mimic his heart beat and sighed.

He said, “Ever since I was diagnosed I never really confronted the facts. I just kept going on like the stubborn old bastard I am. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I didn’t really believe that this could be the end for me. It couldn’t be. I’d sent so many of my own characters to their deaths, made them confront it, but I was always in control. I could save them if I wanted to. I had made the machinery of the world that they inhabited and I played by my own rules.”

He looked up at Mort and said, “I am a writer and in our minds we are Alpha and Omega. But really, we’re just actors playing god, suspended on a frayed cable over the stage. We never believe that cable will snap until we start to fall.”

Jerry stayed in the hospital for three more days. The doctor came in and explained that the cancer had become metastatic and that they were doing everything that they could. He didn’t have to say that they couldn’t do a whole lot. The nurses gave him a morphine drip for the pain, and when he left to be at home they gave him an assortment of pills, most of them for pain.

Mort came over everyday with soft foods; soup and cornbread mostly, and talked about everything but the white elephant in the room. His Boston accent was a constant humming bass line behind Jerry’s silent brooding. He was watching the ocean a lot, his eyes always finding it in the window or through an open door. Jerry tried to write, and managed to finish a story he had started before the stroke, but anything more than that was impossible.

Mort began to come less after the first couple of weeks because, Jerry guessed, it was too hard to watch him die. Jerry had lost twelve pounds in two weeks and avoided looking at himself in the mirror. He felt a distant pity for his friend, and something that felt like gratitude for Mort’s sadness at his illness. But mostly Jerry felt anxious and tense, jumping at every creak the house made or a particularly large wave crashing. He only slept about three hours a night total because of the pain.

One morning Jerry woke from a light doze. The sun had not yet come up, but the light outside was beginning to turn grey. Something was different. Jerry sat up and realized that he had no pain anymore. But he didn’t feel healed, just no pain, as if the nerves that send pain signals had shut off. There was something electric in the air and Jerry saw goose flesh crawling up his naked arms and legs.

He got out of bed and walked through his house, past all the places he had walked a million times before, to his back porch. When he opened it, he was not surprised to see Lady Hong sitting on his back steps, facing the ocean, her newspaper and pencil in hand. She turned to look at him as he stepped out. She did not smile, simply stood up and reached for his hand. He gave it to her unresisting. She led him to the beach in the dim grey light.

“Where are we going?” Jerry asked. He felt light and he could barely feel the cool sand under his bare feet. She was leading him down the beach away from his house, into a fog that continued to grow thicker.

“Do you even know?” Jerry asked. The smell of old jasmine slid under his nose and Jerry began to feel claustrophobic. The fog seemed to be closing in around him. The grit of sand fell away below his feet and it felt like he was walking on a cloud. He felt himself coming undone. His heart thudded and he squeezed Lady Hong’s hand, but she did not stop. She would never stop. She had been pulling Jerry all along, he realized, and she was now pulling him the last few feet she ever would.

“We are almost there,” she said, sounding tired, “Almost there.”

The West

Jeremiah woke up with his head pounding and his stomach churning; an ominous sense that he had done irreparable damage washing over him, making him feel grimy. He had no memory of walking home, only the vague sense of his feet slapping sidewalk and the cool air of night. He managed to make it to the bathroom and turn on the shower. Under the warm water he remembered kissing Marcy and wondered briefly if it was a dream.

Jeremiah got dressed and walked to the bookstore with out breakfast. He was not confident that he could keep it down. When he walked past the pear tree outside of his apartment, he noticed that all the blossoms were gone, leaving the tree bare. A strong wind must have come in the night had blown them all away. It made him uneasy, a feeling made mean by his hangover.

When Jeremiah got to the bookstore, his memory of kissing Marcy proved not to have been a dream. She was sitting on the front steps of the store with two cardboard cups of coffee and deep bags under her eyes. Her hair was tangled and messy, but still somehow beautiful. She looked scared. When she saw Jeremiah she stood up and walked up to him.

“Hey.” He said.

She held one of the coffees out to him.

“Can we talk?”

“Sure. I need to talk to Mrs. Hong first.”

Jeremiah went inside and walked to Mrs. Hong’s office. She was sitting at her desk with her back to him, focused on something on her desk.

“Mrs. Hong?” Jeremiah said as he knocked gently on the door frame.

“Yes.” She did not turn around.

“Can I be half an hour late? There’s someone outside I really need to talk to. I won’t take off for lunch.”

She still didn’t turn around, she just nodded and said, “Not too much time.”

Jeremiah said thank you, but before he left he peeked around her shoulder to see what she was doing.

When Jeremiah came back outside he had a very befuddled look. Marcy asked him, “What’s wrong?”

“Mrs. Hong had something very strange on her desk when I asked her if I could be late.”

“What?”

“Pear blossoms. She was arranging them into a spiral on her desk.”

Jeremiah and Marcy went to a small park across the street from the bookstore and found a secluded bench. They sipped their coffee for a while without talking. It was a grey day, and the air was cold and moist with coming rain. Marcy hugged herself for warmth. Jeremiah offered her his jacket but she refused. He didn’t say anything more.

Finally Marcy said, “My mother is in a home at the far end of town. She has advanced Alzheimer’s and the doctors say she won’t even be able to feed herself soon.”

“I’m sorry.” Jeremiah said.

“It’s why I never left. Even though my own Dad ran away, when I got old enough to leave I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. And now I have to pay her medical bills and I just can’t leave. I’m sure, Mr. Writer, your thinking that I’m giving you back story to build empathy, make you understand my plight. It’s all good drama and everyone has heard it before.”

Jeremiah sighed and leaned back, saying softly, “An afterlife woven out of memory. Makes sense now.”

Marcy looked at him, her eyes moist, and said, “You have the capacity to be a bastard, you know?”

“I am a writer,” Jeremiah said.

Marcy sniffled and said, “I’m not sorry. I have a good life here. I’ve been here my whole life and I’ve managed to put together something nice for myself. Including Brian. I’ve known him since grade school for christssake.”

Marcy threw her coffee into the trashcan near the bench, and Jeremiah followed suit. She wiped at her nose and went on.

“Brain is kind, supportive, and loyal. He helps me pay for my mothers expenses. He’s never said a mean word to me. He’s stable.”

“A brick wall is stable.”

Jeremiah thought Marcy might get up and leave or even slap him, but she didn’t. She smiled in spite of her self and said, “I know. Sometimes he feels like the arms of the town that have held me since birth. I have dreams where I pick moss and ivy off his back. He never took as much stock in dreams as I did. All he has in his life is his job at the butcher, his damn Camaro, and me. And all I have is him, my mother, and the job at the bank.”

Jeremiah rubbed his chin, trying to be as perceptive as he could in the midst of a hang over.

“I didn’t know any of that about you.”

Marcy’s face became etched in frustration and she said, “I know, we’re basically strangers. I’ve never had, or ever would have a one night stand, even if I’d gone to college. Brian’s the only one I’ve ever had sex with, in fact. So there is no reason this should be happening, why I should be attracted to you.”

Jeremiah wanted to reach for her hand but resisted. He asked, “Why are you attracted to me?

Marcy looked up and they locked eyes. Jeremiah thought that her pupils looked like drops of fresh ink on brown paper. Marcy took a sharp inhale of breath, as if out of fear or lust, and her hands grasped her pant legs by her side.

“That’s why.” She said, “Because of what your doing right now.”

“What am I doing?”

“The way you look at me. As if you’re composing me, like a song, as we speak. Like you’re writing my words as I speak them. Like you’re molding my body anew from clay with your hands. Like you’re dreaming me into something better and worse at the same time.”

Jeremiah reached out to touch her, but she stood up suddenly and said, “I can’t.”

And she was gone. And Jeremiah sat on the bench alone, waiting for rays of sun to poke through the grey sky before walking back to the bookstore. When the sun showed no signs of coming, Jeremiah went back in the dampness of the early afternoon. When he got back Mrs. Hong was out. Her desk was bare. Jeremiah stacked some new arrivals and then manned the cash register. No one came in that day.

Later that evening, when Jeremiah got off work and was walking home, it started to rain. Jeremiah left a little early because Mrs. Hong never came back. She did that sometimes, took off and didn’t come back until the next day. The store was small and easy to manage, so Jeremiah didn’t mind, even if it was a little strange to leave your store in the care of a fairly new employee.

Before Jeremiah got back home he was soaking. The naked pear tree outside his window looked skeletal and mean in the dark rain, so Jeremiah closed his blinds. He took off all of his clothes except his briefs and sat in front of his computer, his fingers hovering over the keys. He thought about Marcy’s stern mouth at the bench and of tangled and beautiful hair. He thought of the bony hand of the pear tree outside his window, making obscene gestures at him in the rain. Jeremiah took his hands away from the computer keys, said “fuck it” and went to his fridge for a beer.

Before he got to his fridge though, he heard a knocking at his door. Skeptically he walked to it, forgetting his lack of clothes. He opened it to find Marcy standing in front of him in a half open rain coat, face full of torment and beautiful black hair dripping small rivers down her back. She stepped in and said, “I don’t want to be the same forever. I don’t want you to stop looking at me the way you do.”

She came to him and their lips met. Jeremiah pushed his door closed and they fell on each other like rip tides, tearing at clothes and skin and hair. They were waves of electrical impulses, crashing against each other in blinding neon flashes. They were pools of ink bleeding into each other. They were the sum total of every past movement and choice cascading into itself.

They made love three times; once on the floor just inside Jeremiah’s apartment, once in Jeremiah’s bed, and once in the shower. They lay next to each other for a long time, Jeremiah tracing endless patterns into Marcy’s skin with his fingertip. Whenever he found a scar or birthmark, he would run his thumb over it gently like the imperfections on handmade clay pot, appreciating the authenticity of craftsmanship. Marcy was still holding his manhood softly and she looked at it, whispering “Composer’s wand”. They laughed softly at her joke and did not acknowledge the twisted truth behind it.

When Marcy finally left no words were said between them. There was nothing left to say. They had expressed everything there was to be expressed, and anything more would have been superfluous. She simply kissed him and was gone, leaving Jeremiah tired, ecstatic, in awe, and a little afraid.

The next morning was still grey and wet with the probability of rain. When Jeremiah went to work, the bookstore was unlocked. Mrs. Hong was still gone and this unnerved Jeremiah. But he went about tending the store as if she were there, waiting for customers to come in. But none did. In fact, Jeremiah didn’t see anyone that day; not in the bookstore, the street outside, or in the park when he took a stroll in the park to smoke a cigarette. Jeremiah thought of the way animals can sense disaster approached right before it happens and run away. Jeremiah shook off the thought and tried to abate his feeling of anxiety. But as he walked back through the park under the sepia toned sky, he could taste a sense of precariousness in the air like salt water. The words event horizon rose to his mind like some kind of hysterical mantra and he shivered.

Just before Jeremiah came out of the car he heard a sharp noise, like the roar of some beast. It gurgled for a moment and then something roared away. A car engine. As Jeremiah came out of the park a thought struck him and made him cold. The car engine sounded like that of an older car. A Camaro. Jeremiah came back to the store hoping that Mrs. Hong was back, along with a calming dose of reality.

She was not.

Later that night Marcy showed up at Jeremiah’s apartment again and they made love as if they had been together for years. They lay naked on his bed and she smoked one of his cigarettes.

“This doesn’t feel like the illicit affair that it should feel like.” She said.

“Why do you say that?”

She turned on her side and Jeremiah let his eyes roam over her body comfortably, on some level calculating when he would be able to rise to the occasion again.

Marcy stubbed out her cigarette and said, “It’s doesn’t have the sense of…taboo that I thought a scandal would. Sexually, that is.”

Jeremiah, feeling slightly hurt said, “Well I’m sorry I don’t have sexual prowess enough to meet your standards. If you wanted real lasciviousness you should have had an affair with a poet, I hear those heathens do things that the late patrons of Sodom and Gomorrah would be sickened by.”

Marcy laughed and said, “No, that’s not what I meant. It’s just that we’ve only been doing this for two days and you already know all the twists and turns to bring me home. It doesn’t feel wrong, is what I’m saying. It feels like we’ve been doing this forever. It feels like we were meant to do this.”

Jeremiah smiled and said, “I know all your twists and turns?”

“Like a road map.”

Jeremiah pulled down the covers to reveal their nakedness and said, “Well, lets find an alternate route.”

The next day Mrs. Hong was still missing. Jeremiah didn’t bother to do anything but sit at the register. He felt particularly nervous. When he had kissed Marcy goodbye that morning, he’d gotten a sick feeling that he’d never see her again. He hadn’t touched his computer in a couple of days and the anxiety he felt when he had something that needed to be written down was ever present, even though he had nothing to say. He kept waiting to wake up in his bed or for the sky to fall, but neither happened. And so when he left work that evening and saw a black Camaro idling across the street, it didn’t really surprise him.

Jeremiah felt himself walk across the street and around to the passenger side of the car. It was unlocked and Jeremiah got in. Brian sat behind the steering wheel, staring straight ahead. He was wearing a white shirt and blue jeans, and he looked as if he hadn’t shaved in a couple days. He had deep bags under his eyes and he looked only at the road. The two didn’t speak for a while as Brain drove aimlessly along the town’s side streets, the sky growing dark.

“You realize what you’ve done?” Brain said softly.

“I don’t…”

“Don’t play dumb, it’s a waste of time. I know. Everything.” Brian cut him off.

“Oh god. I’m so sorry.”

Brain turned sharply onto a road leading up to a heavily wooded part of town. Something heavy and metal thudded in the glove box between them and Jeremiah realized that his mouth was dry.

“Listen, Brian, what I did was wrong. You have every right to be angry at me. But you have to let it go, and you can’t be mad at Marcy. You’re everything to her. Me; I’m just a fling, a reminder why she stayed in this town.”

Brain snarled and said, “Shut the fuck up. I told you I knew everything.” A crazed smile came upon his face and his voice rose into a mocking falsetto.

“You already know all the twists and turns to bring me home.”

Jeremiah found that he had lost his voice. His heart was thudding loudly and he realized that he had never wanted anything more than to get out of this car and away from Brian.

Brain continued coldly, “It wasn’t just an affair. You had the audacity to try and, how was it put? Re-compose her. You think that I’m everything to her, but she is everything that I am. With out her I am nothing. With out her I’ll just fade away.”

Jeremiah’s voice came back weakly. “How do you know all of this?”

Brian shook his head, “It doesn’t matter how I know. You need to realize what you’ve done.”

Brain took another sharp turn and the metal thing in the glove box thudded again. The Camaro’s headlights cut two holes out of the dark road like the eye sockets of a skull. Jeremiah found himself praying silently in a language that didn’t exist and to an entity he could not name.

“You’ve tried to end me. But I won’t let it happen. I’ll bring an end to you first.”

Brian reached for the glove box with a shaking hand and the next few moments seemed to stretch out in time for eternity.

Brian’s hand was inches away from the glove box when he completed a turn and his headlights illuminated a figure in the center of the road. The two men’s eyes saw the figure in time for their brains to reconstruct the image in their minds, but not in time for Brain to brake. The screeching of Brain’s tires seemed to go on indefinitely as the image of Mrs. Hong, standing like a statue in the middle of the road, burned into Jeremiah’s mind.

And then they were upside down and moving forward. Jeremiah saw the image of a redwood’s scaly belly, suspended upside down, coming at them terrifically fast.

There was a great cacophony of breaking wood and crunching metal. And then silence.

When Jeremiah awoke, he was still upside down in the car. He could hear and smell smoke coming from the engine and the creaking sound of the wheels still turning in the air. His body felt broken, but he managed to undo his seat belt and drop onto the ceiling of the car. He looked over at the driver’s seat, but Brain was gone. Only some smeared blood on the driver’s side window and what looked like a handprint.

Jeremiah crawled out of the wreck and managed to stand up. He felt flimsy and became aware of a searing pain in his sides. He coughed and felt broken glass in his side. He brought a hand to his mouth and came away with blood. In the smear of scarlet across his palm he spotted something. He looked closely and saw that it was a blood stained pear blossom. It smelt of old jasmine.

“Time to go.” Said a voice behind Jeremiah.

He turned and saw Mrs. Hong standing there, hair in a tight little bun, mouth small and serious.

“Where is Brian?”

Mrs. Hong shook her head and said, “Gone.”

“What…what the hell is going on? What is this?” Jeremiah gestured wildly around him, not feeling about the pain in his sides. He felt more blood trickle down his chin.

Mrs. Hong shrugged and said, “The end.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Mrs. Hong shook her head and said, “I don’t know.”

Jeremiah realized that her eyes were shiny with fear. She was just as scared as he was, but she had dignity enough not to show it. She held out her hand and Jeremiah took it. He tried to look back at the town that had become his home, but it was obscured by the trees. The stars had come out and the sky was brilliantly studded with their white light. Jeremiah acknowledged their beauty and turned to follow Mrs. Hong.

“I guess I was right,” Jeremiah said, “I won’t ever see Marcy again.”

Mrs. Hong shrugged and said, “There is no way to know.”

They walked down the road together, hand in hand, into the gathering darkness.

The Compass Rose

Where do they go, these beings we have created, when they are no longer called upon? Where do we go when in kind we ourselves are no longer called upon? We walk the fog of our mind surrounded by the chaotic faces of lovers and loved ones like pear blossoms in the wind. Actors playing God, looking at the fraying cables of our life and hoping to hold off the Fates’ shears a little longer. Our eyes move over words and bring them to life, and then let them die again, a never-ending cycle. Our eyes are hemlock and gadfly in one. We can only hope that we simulate some greater pattern and render the lives in our hands as colorfully as possible. To take them, as a great master once said, to an untouched field of freshly fallen snow, and let them run their brief lives out in the snow and transcribe the pattern of their footprints. We can only hope we get it right this time. We can only hope.

The Brutal Incident in Mysore, India Involving Elephants

2011-06-26T16:42:00.000-07:00

Tokyo may be home to Godzilla, but the Indian town of Mysore has wild elephants. The elephants entered Mysore Wednesday, June 8^th, and began to ravage the unsuspecting town with a rage and bloodlust that can only be likened to radioactively enhanced monsters. They charged moving buses, chased horrified crowds in the street, and one of them even stormed a women’s college compound. Several cows were also killed. Many were injured and at least one man was trampled to death when he came out of his home to see what the tumult was all about. The elephant’s reign of terror lasted until one was trapped in a barn, and another was tranquilized. No one is quite sure what happened to the other two, which leaves one in an almost religious state of paranoia. The golem of the elephant’s, their ivory wendigos, have descended and then returned to the ether, waiting to strike again.

The explanation offered for these creatures rage was encroachment on their territory by humans, forcing them to come into town to search for food. People in India forage deeper and deeper into the wild and bring their cattle to graze on the elephant’s food source. And an elephant never forgets. But the subtle poetry of the incident is being overlooked, as it is with most animal attacks, especially when the culprit has been portrayed as having a docile nature. How many of us out in the west have been to the Ringling Bros. Circus and seen the platoon of elephants in their blue head bans and tiaras, being ridden by clowns and acrobats, and performing menial stunts? How many of us have fond memories of Dumbo using his laughably large ears and his adorable doe eyes to learn how to fly? In the west, when you begin talking about elephants, the average person will begin to smell cotton candy and hear the first few bars of the racist crow singing, “I’ve done seen about every thing, when I see an elephant fly”.

Like so many other things in America, elephants have been domesticated, trained, made into gimmicky shadows of their wild brethren, and marketed to overweight families in Mickey Mouse T-shirts. And since Western culture, in as much as it is comprised of entertainment and commercialism, has spread across the world like a bad cold, these sentiments may have even affected the collective memory of the inhabitants of India. No one remembers the proud Wooly Mammoths that many a Cro-Magnon lost their lives to in order that their family may have food in winter. No one remembers the elephant’s six sets of molar teeth, and that the passing of the last set condemns the creature to a slow death by starvation. No one remembers the elephant graveyards, a place where they choose to die for reasons no one knows but the elephants. A place where the ivory cathedrals of bone and tusk whisper of eons filled with grace and dignity and strength.

So when these animal attacks happen, one must look closer to see the subtle pen strokes of mother nature giving us a kind reminder: I’ve been around long before you crawled out of the pond, and I will be around long after you are nothing but ash—don’t fuck with me.

Half Full

2011-04-05T14:15:00.000-07:00

The man is sitting on the couch of his crowded room. There is whiskey on the table, half full. Or half empty depending on the way you look at it. She is bent lithely over the table, flush cheeks touched with the blue light of the computer screen. There is a quiet mischief in her eyes, some unacknowledged gravity. She finally selects a song. Strings, the notes wooed softly from them, lilt through out the room like motes of dust, alighting on everything: the whiskey bottles, the crumples clothes splayed like past lives on the carpet, the bookshelves filled with dog eared novels, pizza boxes, a guitar with five strings. A soft, ethereal voice brings an invisible light to the dark room, the quiet fan above them playing the part of quiet metronome.

The man says, Classical?

She turns, thin frame counter balanced by the whiskey, her dress flowing like petals around her hips.

I used to be a dancer. Ballet. Seven years.

Dance for me.

She obliges, transforming her body into delicately balanced angles, softened at the edges by the flush in her face. She reaches down and grabs the bottle of whiskey and places the glass atop her head. The cap is off. She stands on her tiptoes and is erect. She dances for him and it is beautiful. The whiskey sloshes but none comes out. She asks him,

What are you thinking about?

Hourglasses. Keep dancing.

She places the whiskey back on the table and continues dancing. The man watches a moment more, then gets up. He places one hand on her hip and the other in her hand, and they are dancing across the room. No one in particular is leading. When they come close to the clutter of his life they step like deer over it or around it.

A test of grace, he says, avoiding all my bull shit.

They dance around the room until the end of the song. They do not touch anything but each other and the ground.

Now we have to bow, she says.

She teaches him how, him supporting her from behind while she curtsies, then he bowing as gallantly as he can over the whiskey.

That was nice, she says.

They sit on the couch again and he grabs for the whiskey. She has drunk more than she wanted and thinks of her self as sufficiently intoxicated. He never knows when he has drunk too much, but he knows not to show it when he has.

You know, she says, the man usually dies before the woman. I think it has something to do with the every day hubris.

I already have a burst blood vessel in my cheek. Under my right eye.

I thought that was a birthmark.

He touches it and says, oh, it might be.

Do you want to go to bed?

Not yet.

When? she asks and looks around the dark room, but there are no clocks anywhere to be seen. She is happy about that, if it was almost dawn she didn’t want to know, the knowledge was no good to her. It would only exhaust her.

When? she asks again.

When I finish this whiskey.

Don’t be crazy it’s half full.

He holds the bottle up to filter the low light of the room through the amber fluid, capturing it and distilling it into a dark nebula of turning fluorescence. The man thinks again of hourglasses. And stars being born. And the vastness of things beyond his dirty little room. And other thoughts much too big for a person to fit in his head.

Looks half empty to me, he says.

Anonymous

2011-03-08T23:00:00.001-08:00

When Amy saw the man through his hotel room window, he was naked. He stood in front of the sink shaving, oblivious to her accidental voyeurism. He was tall and very tan, his head topped with loose curls of brown hair. He had dark hair down his forearms, his chest, and a tuft of it below his navel that ran down into a dense patch of pubic hair. His stomach protruded slightly near his hips, but the curves of his flesh gave the impression of latent muscle, at the beginning of their path to atrophy. Amy could not tell his age, but guessed he must be at least thirty, thirty five, older than she was. The lights were off in his bathroom and he seemed to shave via his sense of touch and knowledge of his face alone.

Amy was staying in the room above the naked man and had been coming down the stairs on her way to the pool to read when she saw him. Ronald was still in the room, talking to his wife on the phone, probably telling her that he loved her and would be home soon, and to tell his two kids, both boys, that he loved them too. Amy looked up at the sky, the sinking sun staining the California horizon the same color as the neon sign at the front of the hotel building that read Paradise Hotel. Ronald had not thought up the name, some unoriginal marketing guy did, but the hotel chain was Ronald’s brain child. There were about eight or nine of them along central and northern California, the biggest one in Monterey where Amy lived. They weren’t luxury hotels, not in the range of Four Seasons or the Hilton, but more in the range of Double Tree or Holiday Inn. They pulled in a lot of their profit from hosting conventions or traveling sports teams if they were lucky.

Ronald was from White Plains, New York, and only came to California to run his business. Back when he was designing the hotel he fell into the most common misconception east coast people make about the west coast: palm trees. Every hotel seemed to be surrounded by a perimeter of palm trees, as if striving to be some sort of stucco reinforced oasis. Amy worked at the hotel in the lobby, and when she had first met Ronald she thought the he was a rude customer and had treated him accordingly.

He came in one Friday towards the end of Amy’s shift. It was summer and that Friday had been particular busy with the influx of tourist coming for the bitter cold beach and even more so for the Aquarium. Amy was exhausted and had been in a daze when Ronald walked in. Instead of gently rousing her from her daze, Ronald rung the little bell on the counter sharply. Amy heart skipped a beat and she gave the man a scowl, but she did not make a move.

Ronald said, “Come on lady, I don’t have all damn night.”

Amy was not a fortunate woman. Her parents had been killed by a drunk driver when she was fifteen, leaving their only child an orphan. She had not been able to afford college, and had been working minimum wage jobs since she graduated. Any beauty she had once had was tarnished by the weight of having to support herself since fifteen. She only left Monterey once, to visit an estranged Aunt in Oregon who turned out to be a drunk, which for obvious reasons Amy could not deal with. The rest of the world was just a dream to her, and one she rarely indulged.

But for all the misfortune in her life, Amy was a proud woman who never let her dignity be compromised. She worked hard, respected people who deserved it and took no shit from anyone. Her attitude and work ethic had finally gotten her the hotel gig that paid pretty nicely and allowed her to catch up on her rent payments at her small apartment. But the sharp ring of the desk bell had shattered all this knowledge in her mind and all she knew was that this man was disrespecting her and she would have none of it.

The man spoke again, “I said come on lady, I’m tired as shit and I want my room. I have a reservation, alright?”

“No.”

Amy said it while she looked directly into the man’s dark brown eyes. He was not short but no one would say he was tall. But he had a stocky build and a full head of short curly hair that put him ahead of most male tourist in terms of looks. He wore a long khaki coat and a duffle bag slung over his shoulder. His face seemed perpetually flushed as if fueled by some inner flame. He looked at her with surprise, his jaw clenched with indignation. He nostrils flared as he said,

“What do you mean ‘no’?”

“You were very rude to me just now, and I’m not giving you a key until you apologize. I don’t care if you have a reservation, I have the right to refuse service to anyone.”

The man’s eyes narrowed, and for a moment Amy thought he had the look of an impassioned chess player, moving mental pieces around in his head. He said, “What’s your name?”

Amy pointed at her name tag and said, “Amy Little.”

The man put his hand palm down on the counter and leaned over it towards her and said, “My name is Ronald Fairlink, and I own this hotel. What do you say to that?”

He had a glint in his eye, a checkmate, the pleasure of victory. But he underestimated Amy’s reserve and she simply said,

“Well then Ron you’d better either apologize or fire me.”

Ronald’s face went lax with misunderstanding. His intimidation had not been received. The thrust of male force had met an unyielding wall of reserve. A couple hours and a hotel dinner later they were having sex in his room. Afterwards, when Ronald lay snoring in the sheet and Amy was on the balcony smoking a cigarette, she could only think of one word to describe the experience: Ravaged. Not a painful siege, but the quiet, violent asphyxiation. The way ivy will steadily envelope a sapling, or the way the ocean will eat away at the seaside cliffs, ripping them away from land and into the sea. Lightening turning sand into fingers of glass that probe skyward, re-arranging the very molecules of once constant soil as it sees fit, transubstantiation, the stroke of God. And during all this Ronald neither apologized nor fired Amy. He had taken her. And now they shared a bed whenever he was in California, which was pretty regularly.

Amy now walked away from the naked man’s window and made her way to the pool. The book, now swinging in her hand with one finger inserted roughly where she had left off, was The Great Gatsby. It was the last classic ever presented to Amy in high school, and the only one she ever related to. She often fantasized about being in Daisy Buchanan shoes, having Gatsby lavish her with riches. For Amy, the idea of Gatsby’s wealth and never having to know material want ever again was just as appealing as the sexual excitement of the affair. Amy re-read the book almost every year as a sort of comforting talisman.

But she was not thinking of Gatsby as she arrived at the pool, but of the naked man she had just seen. She wondered who this man was. What was his name? Was he staying in the hotel alone, or had there been an equally nude woman waiting for him in the bed? As Amy sat down on one of the stiff lounge chairs around the pool, opening the book with only the pretense of reading, she wondered what kind of man has the level of intimacy with his own face to shave in the dark. A vain man or a lonely man? Perhaps both.

On this particular trip, Ronald was negotiating building permits with the city of Monterey in an attempt to build another Paradise Hotel. What Amy couldn’t understand was why Ronald had chosen the location he had, which was an out of business waffle house only half a mile from the Paradise Hotel where they were staying.

“I just don’t get it Ron,” Amy said one night after dinner, “Why would having two of the same hotels so close to one another be worth the trouble?”

Ron lay on the bed while Amy sat on the end, taking off her shoes and her leggings. Ronald had taken her to a nice restaurant that night, and it gave Amy the opportunity to wear the nice dress that Ronald had gotten her a couple months ago. He was only in his boxers, his hands resting on the bulge of his stomach. He seemed more interested in the curves of Amy’s back and ass than talking business, but he indulged her.

“It’s about competition. Do you know what’s around the corner from the building site?”

Amy thought a minute as she stood up and took out her earrings.

“Your talking about the Double Tree?”

Ronald mimed a gun with his index finger and thumb, firing it in the general direction of her crotch.

“Bingo, babe.”

Amy walked over to him and presented her back to him.

“Unzip me.”

Ron sat up and ran the palms of his hands from her ass up the nodes of her spine to the zipper of her dress. He began to pull it down with slow zeal as he spoke.

“You see Double Tree might have the means to compete with one of our hotels, but with another so close, it will take at least a portion of their customers. Eventually we’ll just take their business and they’ll dry up like day old cabbage.”

He brought the zipper all the way down and the dress fell to her ankles, revealing her naked back. She turned around and he placed a hand on her thin hip. She saw a point had risen beneath his boxers and his eyes were glassy with lust.

“Don’t you think that’s a little…mean?”

The words sounded childish even as they left her mouth, and Ronald let out a short laugh, pulling her closer. He no longer wanted to talk shop, and he reached over and turned out the lights.

The next day Amy drove back to her apartment. Ronald was meeting with the zoning people so she took the opportunity to use her own shower, change clothes, and make sure that nothing had gone bad in the refrigerator, which, she remembered only had a bottle of mustard, some baby carrots, and some old Chinese take out. The take out smelt bad so Amy tossed it. When Ronald was in town, Amy usually just stayed in the hotel room with him until he left, which was usually a few days later. This particular trip was edging upon almost a week, as the zoning people were being ‘small minded’ as Ronald referred to them.

After making her rounds on the apartment, Amy decided to drive to the beach and read. She grabbed Gatsby and got in her car. It was early fall and the water front was pretty deserted, and the sky was grey with clouds. But even so Amy drove to the far end of the beach, where it was most rocky and there were no tide pools to attract high school science classes. She wore a sweatshirt and jeans rolled up to the knees. She walked barefoot among the black rocks made porous by the incessant battering of the waves. She found a patch of dry sad in a little alcove of rock and sat down to read. She was at the part where Tom Buchanan was introducing Gatsby to his mistress, Myrtle Wilson, the wife of a dull witted gas station attendant.

When Amy and Ronald had first started sleeping together, she had tried to envision him as her Gatsby. Ronald was certainly charming; he knew how to touch a woman in just the right way, with a soft hand on the small of the back, or the first press of cheek when he leaned to talk into someone’s ear. He had a certain kind of sophistication; at nice restaurants he always gave generous tips to good service (although he was not averse to following waiters he held as disrespectful in to kitchen to yell at them), and he always bought Amy tasteful jewelry, very beautiful but never too flashy. But there was something brutish about him, something that reeked of alpha male confidence. His body had not gone doughy like his compatriots; he had managed to retain his physical strength. When he laid a hand on your shoulder, you could feel the cords of muscle conspiring in his arm. Amy had never met his family, had never wanted to know anything about them, but she guessed his wife was beautiful and probably played tennis with other beautiful wives on Sundays.

One night, after they had made love, Amy rolled over and put a hand on his chest. It was hairy and she played with the curls.

“Do you love me?” She asked in a flat tone.

Ronald didn’t move for a long time, almost as if her hadn’t heard her. Then she felt his chest rise as her took in air to speak.

“I want you. When I’m away I think about having you all the time. You’re a very beautiful woman and I’d hate to lose you.”

She had sounded like a possession, but she was not hurt. She could not honestly say that she had strong emotional feelings towards him anyway. The more Amy thought about it, the more Ronald sounded like Tom Buchanan with his cool arrogance and haughty gaze. Amy just prayed she wasn’t become a Myrtle Wilson.

Amy looked up from the book and saw a figure coming down the beach. From her little alcove she was hidden, but she could clearly see someone walking down the beach in her direction. As they got closer Amy could tell it was a man and on some unknown instinct she scooted back until her back touched rock to keep out of sight.

The man she had seen naked walked into view. He was wearing a tee shirt and swimming trunks and the breeze tossed his dark hair this way and that. He was alone and he moved with no haste. He stopped and looked towards the ocean, the gray horizon that seemed to swallow everything. Then he pulled his shirt over his head and kicked off his sandals. For the second time, Amy saw the tan torso of this unknown man as he began wading into the cold autumn waters.

Amy wondered who this man was as she watched him lithely dive into an oncoming wave and re-emerge several feet further out. He might be some kind of Marine Biologist here for the aquarium. She imagined he was a renowned professor at Stanford, or maybe even Santa Barbara. She imagined what college classrooms were like. Were they like high school classrooms or the grand auditoriums she sometimes saw in movies? She tried to envision the man in a tweed jacket and a pair of glasses, talked to her animatedly about the reproductive systems of dolphins as he leaned against his large wooden desk. She imagined him telling her that dolphins were the only other species that had sex for pleasure. Some young guy at the aquarium had told her this in an attempt to hit on her, but she had not idea if it was true. She never went back to aquarium.

When the man was far enough out in the water, Amy decided that it would be best if she were gone when he returned. She climbed quickly over the rocks and began walking back to her car. She looked back on more time and thought about the tweed jacket and glasses. She decided that he might be able to pull off the look.

Amy began to do something strange, something she had never done before. She began to write little anonymous notes and slip them under the door of the room below her. They were quick, almost mimicking the brevity of a haiku. She wrote the first one on the back of one of Ronald credit car receipts. He kept every single one in the back of his wallet and he told her that it was so that when the bills came in the credit card companies could bend him over a table. She tore off the part with his name on it and wrote on the back:

You’re a rose. An absolute rose.

She went down in the middle of the night and slipped it under his door. She imagined him finding it, looking at the items on the receipt (a filet mignon, a bottle of red wine, and a chicken Caesar salad) and wondering who it would have been, maybe even imagining someone he must know was female from the curly, neat handwriting. Amy wondered what she looked like in his mind, and felt a sort of excitement at being able to enter him in such a ghostly way.

She continued to write the notes and deliver them in the middle of the night. One asked:

Is it true that Dolphins have sex for pleasure?

And another one, written after several glasses of wine and bolder, said:

I’d like to get a pink cloud and put you in it and push you around

During the day she would see him, sometimes around the pool or walking to or from the room. Once they passed each other going in opposite directions of the room and he smiled quickly as he passed her. She changed her theory that he was a professor of Marine Biology. She now imagined that he was a surfer bum from Santa Cruz who had just gotten out of a messy relationship with a bikini wearing pothead and had taken a trip to Monterey to clear his head a little. Surfing was too painful because it brought back memories of the woman who scorned him, but swimming in the ocean was cathartic to his aquatic soul. She imagined him visiting the aquarium daily, watching the marine life, wishing he could switch places with a shark or a manta ray and lead a simpler life. Sometimes she would get the idea of going downstairs and introducing herself, but some deep seated fear prevented her.

Meanwhile the sexual dynamic between Ronald and Amy changed drastically. Where once Ronald had mostly been in control; had been the one to tell Amy what to do, now Amy rolled him over and rode him, demanded things from him, clutched his flesh hard enough to scratch until she came loudly on top of him. Most men would have been thrilled, but Ronald took to being foul-tempered after sex. Where he had once had the power and the ability to take his fill from her, he now found himself the one under command. He was no longer in control. He was no longer the domineering Alpha Male.

But his temper improved when he and his lawyers managed to get the building permit for his new hotel. He would be heading home in a couple of days, and both he and Amy seemed glad of it. Amy thought of calling it quits with him when he left, but she knew that he would start calling or texting her eventually after he got home, letting her know when he was next going to arrive. She knew she would take the paid time off he gave her to spend the few days with him and they would continue on. When it boiled down they were both selfish people taking something from one another unremorsefully. Mosquitoes sticking each other with their prospective proboscises

The day before Ronald was to catch a flight back home he and Amy had one last goodbye fuck. They were still grappling with the shift in their relationship, so they fucked on the rough carpet of their hotel room floor until both their backs were raw and blistered.

“I’m going to go across the street for some beer.” Ronald said as he pulled on his clothes.

Amy only nodded and got dressed as well. When Ronald left she went to her purse and lit a cigarette and sat on the edge of the bed smoking it. There was a soft knock on the door and Amy guessed that Ronald had forgotten his wallet or his cell phone. She stubbed the cigarette out and went to the door.

A small woman stood there, dressed in a plain blouse and jeans. Her brown hair looked thin as it lay unkempt down to her shoulders. The nostrils of her sharp nose, probably surgical enhanced nose, were red and she looked as if she had been crying a great deal. She had bags under her eyes and her face had the plainness of someone who normally wore a fair amount of make up.

When she saw Amy a red light seemed to flip on behind her bloodshot eyes. She looked as if she were about to hit Amy, but her fist simply shook at her sides. In one of the fists she clutched a piece of paper.

“Who are…” Amy tried to get out but was interrupted by the woman.

“You little slut.”

Amy was shaken by the words.

“I don’t know who the fuck you are but…”

The woman held up one angry hand and asked,

“How long have you been fucking him? How long have you been his little whore?”

Amy noticed the diamond on her ringer finger and understanding fell over her. Her body felt numb.

“You’re here. How did you…”

The woman held up the piece of paper and said, “I went to the phone company and got a transcript of his text messages.”

Suddenly Amy saw all the months of transgression, the sly words dripping with saliva configured into intangible electrical signals and emitted into space. It was so easy to bury the girth of the deed beneath the invisible cloak of fibrotic and satellite communication, the shadows of corporeal language allowed the inhibition of speech and eventually action. But now it had all been captured and printed onto sheaf’s of paper, honest material you could hold and feel, and perhaps if your not cautious, cut yourself on. Amy felt a dread build inside of her. How could see step back over boundaries she’d wandered so very far from? How could she bear the weight of what she had done?

“Just answer me one thing.” Ronald’s wife said coldly.

“Did you know he had a family that you were tearing apart or were you content to fuck the side of him that you thought you knew?”

Then she was gone, and Amy had no answers. For any of it.

Amy never saw Ronald again. He never came back to the hotel room and Amy guessed that he had been intercepted by his wife’s wrath and dragged back to his broken home in New York. He’d left a couple pairs of khakis and a polo shirt in the room, but Amy didn’t bother to do anything’s with them, not even drop them off at goodwill. She was over come with a sense of hollowness, scrapped out by the recent events.

She spent a week in her apartment watching television and taking long showers, anything to disrupt and postpone thought. She sat on her couch with her cell phone next to her but not touching, waiting for it to ring. She expected the hotel to call and tell her that she’d been let go, or maybe the hushed voice of Ron from an unknown number wanting to see her. Neither of these things happened. When her phone did ring sometime before Monday, it was her boss asking if she’d would be in to work on Monday. He never asked question about her leave of absences when Ron used to come to town and he never treated her different than the other employees, most likely out of diplomacy rather than understanding. Amy dully heard herself say that she would.

Amy worked in a haze in the lobby that day. It was a Monday and there were few new customers, mostly just people checking out. She kept a plastic smile glued to her face and her eyes glued to the computer screen as often as she could. An endless stream of “Thanks for staying with us” and “Have a great day”.

When he came up she didn’t even recognize him for a brief moment. When she did her breath caught quietly in her throat and the plastic smile melted.

“Hello.”

His voice was soft, distracted, and almost girlish in its hasty inflection. He was wearing jeans and a white shirt tucked into his pants. He had a black suitcase by his feet and a backpack. The sight of the tucked shirt was almost nauseating to Amy and she stuck her hands under the counter to keep them from darting across and ripping the shirt free from the jeans, from trying to fix him where he stood.

Amy finally managed a hushed “Can I help you?”

He nodded and said, “Yeah, I’m checking out.”

He said his name. It floated into Amy’s ear, down her arm, and into her fingertips which clicked them into the computer. Later, reflecting on the moment, no matter how hard she thought about it Amy would not be able to remember the name of the man. She was stunned by the suddenness of their interaction and it took her almost ten minutes to find his account and print out his receipt. He had begun to shuffle impatiently, looking at anything but her to avoid staring.

Something about the whole scene Amy felt herself participating in wasn’t right. The wrong of it squirmed inside of her chest, sinking lower. The word mirage floated to the surface of her mind and she clutched at it desperately.

“Did you enjoy your stay sir?”

He tilted his head sideways noncommittally.

“It was alright I suppose. I’m eager to get home.”

His voice wasn’t the voice she’d given him. Where was this home she hadn’t given him? Everything was wrong.

“There is something I would like to bring to your attention before I go.”

He leaned on the counter and Amy noticed a flake of dandruff perched in the part of his hair. She felt that if it fell she would scream.

“What’s that sir?”

“The past couple days, someone has been leaving litter in my room. It wasn’t anything terribly bad, just some scraps of paper, but if other people have been getting complaints of something similar you should talk to your cleaning staff.”

Amy nodded and said she would and the man thanked her and was gone. When he left Amy felt the air rush back into the room and had to sit down. She suddenly felt a heaviness in her limbs, as if gravity had been turned down secretly and had just been restored back to it’s normal strength.

Houston, we have landed, Amy thought to her self. She felt something bubbling up inside of her and was surprised when it came out as laughter. She let her self laugh and laugh until the next customer, very confused, approached the counter.

Blue Moon

2011-02-06T20:21:00.001-08:00

The letter came into our office the Wednesday four days before Halloween. I was working as a staff writer for a small town newspaper in Massachusetts, about an hours drive from Boston. My boss, Mike, made an announcement on the Monday before the letter that he wanted someone to do a story for the holiday, a Halloween special. The other employees, myself included, scoffed at the trite nature of the assignment and I didn’t think about it again until the letter came in. It went to my buddy who was in Opinion and Special Interest. Every now and then he got a letter that was essentially the ramblings of some half senile citizen about the crime of dog feces in their yard or the belief that the president was the anti-Christ, with scriptural evidence to boot. He would show me these letters and we would have a laugh.

The Wednesday he brought me the letter in question he didn’t have the usual look of humor on his face. His eyebrows were compressed in the center of his forehead as if from some internal conflict between amusement and bewilderment. He tossed it on my desk and said with a half smile, “Take a look at this one Dan. It’s a new breed of self-deprecating crazy.”

The letter was only a paragraph long and it read:

To Whom It May Concern:

I know your staff doesn’t usually take interest in interviews, especially with someone as unknown or unimportant as me, but I thought that in regards to the upcoming holiday you might be able to at least make something amusing out of me. My name is Joseph Kendellman and I am vampire. If you decide you’re interested, I’ll be at the Blue Moon bar on Friday. But I’m usually there every night, so don’t worry about being punctual.

~Joe

Usually, after reading a letter from a crazy, I would laugh and my buddy would take it back and shred it, or keep it in a bottom drawer if it were especially good. But I simply frowned and put it on my desk.

“Do you mind if I hold on to this?” I asked.

He looked at me kind of funny and said, “You're not serious?”

“Not really, but Mike does want that Halloween special bullshit, and one of us is eventually going to have to do it. At least this is better than a story about razor blades in candied apples.”

I picked up the letter gingerly and reviewed it again. I knew the Blue Moon bar: it was just outside the town limits, off the side of the highway entrance. If I had to go on a trip to Boston, or if I got into a fight with Annie, I usually stopped there for a quick beer or to catch to score of the Celtics game before the trip.

“Besides, I need to get in good with Mike to see if maybe I can get a promotion after Christmas.”

I showed it to Mike later that day in his office. He was the kind of guy with pictures of his lumpy wife and dull-eyed kids on his desk to both remind us that he was a pious family man, and to remind him that his job was the only thing close to passion he had left. He stopped short of motivational posters.

He scanned the letter and said, “Sounds like another nut. Gracefully short winded though.”

I nodded and said, “Most certainly, but I thought it might be a good subject for the Halloween piece. It might peek people’s seasonal fancies, sort of an unholy hybrid of ghost hunters and E true Hollywood stories. It’s pulp, but pulp sells.”

Mike nodded, smoothing a bony hand across his comb over. He said, “Alright, go ahead and check this out, see what you can squeeze out of him. But don’t waste too much time on it.”

“Sure thing, Mike.”

I tuned to go and Mike said, “Dan.”

I turned back. Mike looked at me with a mixture of approval and subtle weariness.

“Good initiative.”

I smiled and said, “Thanks Mike.”

When I got home that night Annie was in a mood. She was sitting in an easy chair by the window, watching the streetlights snap on one by one. It was late October and the sky was pregnant with un-fallen snow. Annie loved to watch the first snow of the year; she said it soothed her. Winter was her dark time, the times when she rarely left the bedroom and her cheeks were perpetually moist and red. It was hard on both of us.

“Hey, love.” I said.

She turned toward me and forced a smile.

“Hey.”

“How was your day? Did the school get back to you?”

Annie’s forced smile waned and she nodded.

“What did they say?”

“They already filled the position, but they want to keep me on as a sub.”

I went over to the window and kneeled beside her, taking one cold hand in mine. Annie had wanted to be a teacher since I had met her in college. She loved children; she loved the hope in their eyes and the unshaped potential. In college, she had a whole collection of romantic poetry about the beauty of children, their proximity to the great mystery we all came from and whence we shall return. She thought children were beautiful, and as her favorite poet Keats said, beauty was truth. It was something I never understood. When I saw kids running around the jungle gym with snot running down their face and dirt under their fingernails, I didn’t see beauty; I saw Lord of the Flies. But I did see beauty in Annie. She was something fragile, and when I kissed her I knew that she was something that was meant for me alone. She was like a glass figurine I could stare into all day, seeing new lights reflected back at me; something I could cradle and love.

I planted a kiss on Annie’s hand and said, “I’m sorry love. You deserved that job, you really did.”

Annie’s brow furrowed, “It’s that damned doctor.”

“He’s required by law to say those things.”

Annie looked away from me and back out the window.

“It’s not like I’m schizophrenic. I’m not dangerous. There should be no reason to tell the school board about it. It’s my personal business.”

I paused and surveyed her thin outline against the windowpane. She always lost weight in the winter. For the first couple years of our relationship I was amazed that I still found her staggeringly beautiful, even when she became so thin, like a tree losing its leaves. And it made the spring all the more perfect, waking up to sunshine and the smell of pollen and fresh verdant life; Annie kissing me awake almost manically to pull me into the sunlight. She would collect bundles of flowers and place them in vases and spare cups around the house. She made the allergies seem insignificant to the overflowing life of the apartment. Who needed nasal passages to breathe when such a breath flowed from her? But the last few winters had been hard, and I found myself tired all the time.

“Annie, did you take your pill today?”

Annie sighed and pulled her hand out of mine. She never got angry, just cold. It was withering.

“No.” She said it nonchalantly and I had to take a breath to keep from getting angry.

“Why not?”

“Because I thought that it was going to snow today. I feel numb when I take those pills and I want to be awake for the first snow.”

I stood up and walked away, feeling a weight in my chest. I said, “Damnit Annie, why don’t you take care of yourself? Don’t you know it’s not just about you?”

She turned and only looked at me, her eyes sharp but full of a flowing sadness she could not control. I felt something bending inside me and the effect was nauseating. It was like a once strong plank of wood, now feeble, made to bow almost to its breaking point over and over, the grain creaking and contesting, crying out in fear.

I walked into the bedroom without turning on the lights, undressed and fell into bed. I was getting thinner as the world eased into winter, and the sharp angles of my face were softened by a thin brown beard. The sheets were cold and I shivered until my body heated them up a little. I drifted into a tentative sleep until I felt the weight of Annie crawling into bed. She placed a cold arm around my hips and pressed into me from behind. She was naked, and I could feel the pressure of her breasts in my back and the hairs of her pubis against my leg. Her cheeks, moist and cool, rested on my shoulder. She whispered softly in my ear and I turned around. We made quiet, and cautious love, the kind you make on thin ice over freezing water.

After she fell asleep, I walked into the kitchen. The moon shone through the window, almost full, and big with the winter equinox. During these months, we threw out all the alcohol in the house. But I always hid a small fifth of whiskey behind the refrigerator. I retrieved it and took a swig. I looked at myself in the reflection of the windowpane. My face looked gaunt, pale, tired. I had dark patches under my eyes and I rarely had an appetite during this time. I thought of Annie, and the months to come. It had been getting so hard lately, so stressful. I knew that leaving her was not an option; I didn’t have a clear memory when she was not with me, nor did I want to. She was all I had. But it was getting so hard, so very hard to bear the weight of her love.

On Friday, I went to the Blue Moon bar. I arrived at around seven, shortly after the sun set, and sat in the corner sipping at a glass of beer. The bar was not crowded, mostly old men in big winter jackets, drinking with their heads down. They were not there to have a good time or to watch the game, even though there was a small TV in the corner. They only conversed with their glasses. The air was thick and oppressive with cigarette smoke. The bartender, another old man mindlessly cleaning glasses and dispensing beer from a tap, did not enforce the law banning smokers outside to the cold. He himself had a cigarette dangling from his haggard lips, and it jumped up and down when ever he muttered something. I sat in the back, near the jukebox that was playing a low jazz song.

I identified Joseph Kendellman the moment he walked in. He was younger than the other men by at least a decade. I suppose he saw the same to be true of me and made a beeline towards me. He sat down in the chair opposite and for a moment, he didn’t say anything. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes, lit one, and examined me. He was young, but the skin of his face hung loosely around his jaw and eyes, and his scraggly beard had not been trimmed in weeks. He was certainly pale, but not the death-like pallor I had read about and seen in movies.

He exhaled a cloud of smoke, coughed once and said, “So I guess you people got my letter.”

I nodded, not sure what to say, but he saved me the trouble.

“I apologize if your superior sent you here against your will. I didn’t expect anyone to come; I wrote the letter almost as a whim. I know you all think I’m crazy.”

I said, “No, actually, I requested to interview you.” I left out that I did in fact think he was crazy. “My name’s Dan.”

He extended his hand and we shook. “Joe. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

He looked at me a while, then took another drag of his cigarette, saying, “Well, let me get a drink and we’ll get started.”

He ordered whiskey straight, no ice. I ordered another beer. We sat across from each other silently for a moment, Joseph taking large gulps of his whiskey. I wasn’t sure how to start. I thought of the Anne Rice novel and snickered quietly.

“You really don’t have to do this…”

“No,” I said, “I’m sorry. I suppose the first question I should ask, Joe, is if you really believe you’re a vampire?”

Joe sat a moment, smoking his cigarette. He had deep lines under his eyes, and his fingertips were nicotine yellow. He finally sat forward and said, “There are a lot of things in this world that I don’t, and never can hope to understand, but about this I am regrettably one hundred percent sure.”

I took a drink of my beer and said, “You know, I was expecting someone a little more…eccentric.”

Joe smiled softly and his cheeks creased like paper. I wondered briefly if he had dimples when he truly smiled. He said, “I know what you were expecting. Black cape, red contact lenses, and a glass full of tomato juice. I know vampires are supposed to be these lithe, seductive creatures of the night, but that’s not what I am.”

“Well, how did you first become a vampire?”

Joe sighed and said, “A long, morose story.”

“Well how does it begin?”

Joe finished his glass of whiskey and motioned at the bar tender who quickly brought him another. Joe said, “Like all of these stories do; with a woman.”

I sat back, confused. “Who was she?”

Joe finished his cigarette and stubbed it out on the bottom of his boot. He pulled the pack out again and inserted another cigarette in his mouth. He motioned at the pack and said, “Can I offer you a smoke?”

I shook my head. “Quit a few years back.”

Joe nodded, lit his cigarette and asked, “Dan, do you mind me asking if you have someone in your life?”

“My girlfriend, Annie.”

“And do you love her?”

I nodded. He shrugged and said, “Then there is no point in me describing my wife to you. You’ll only see Annie. I’ll go on about my wife’s beauty and you’ll only see Annie. That’s how it is with these things. People only have enough room in their bodies for one love, everything else is simply a reflection.”

I said nothing, waited for him to continue. He took another deep drink from his whiskey. He did not even grimace, as if he were drinking water. Finally he said, “I loved my wife very much. We had a good life together. We owned a little bookstore a few towns over. It was my parent’s business and I inherited it around the time we got married. She wanted to travel but I had obligations. I told her we would travel as soon as I sold the business. It was the first false promise I made to her. I had no intention of keeping the store; my ambitions were higher than that.”

Joe gave a half smirk and shook his head, “I wanted to be a poet. But days turned into weeks, which turned into months, and soon we had a life set up and I was working nine to five at the bookstore. My wife got a job at the local bank as a teller and for a while we were happy. We forgot about traveling and about the ambitions we had before settling down. We supported each other, kept each other strong, like husbands and wives should.”

I thought of Annie, sitting by the window, staring and waiting, helpless. Joe took another drag from his cigarette and another deep drink from his glass.

“But then my wife started talking about kids. I had never imagined myself a father, but I loved her and she so desperately wanted a baby. So I promised her that we would have one together. That was the second false promise I made to her. The second lie.”

Joe finished his second glass of whiskey and motioned to the bartender, who brought him another glass.

“She conceived on April the 15^th and she miscarried September the 12^th. After the fact, I told her that everything was going to be all right, that we’d get through this. That was the third and final lie I told her. She left me in October. I just woke up one morning and she was gone.”

Joe again stubbed his cigarette on his boot and sat back. He took another drink and was quiet, letting the whiskey sit in his mouth a moment, savoring it, before letting it flow down his throat. I finished my beer while I waited for him to continue, but he remained silent, staring off into the distance. I could feel something between us, something that prevented me from fully connecting to his story, from feeling pity. It was a milky, obscure barrier and I was slightly repulsed by it. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I thought about the myth of vampires having foul breath, a result of their strictly blood diet. I wondered if breath tempered in only cigarettes and whiskey smelled much better.

“So, then you became a vampire?” I asked.

Joe shook his head and said, “No not then. I was mortally wounded, staked in the heart, if you’ll pardon the phrase. I got drunk the night after she left and stayed drunk for a week straight, drinking all night until I passed out, waking up late, and repeating the process. I only left the house for booze and cigarettes. I didn’t have much of an appetite, and I usually ended up vomited anything I’d eaten sometime in the night.”

He finished his whiskey and held up two fingers to the bartender, who brought him two more glasses. He pushed one in my direction.

“Oh no thank you, I think I’ll just stick to beer.”

Joe tapped the glass and said, “Please, share a drink with me. Whiskey fits much better in two glasses than in one.”

I took the glass tentatively and sipped it. The drink was strong and it burned all the way down. But it felt good. Joe continued.

“After a while, payments on the bookstore piled up and they foreclosed it. Before they boarded it up, I ransacked the place and made off with several bags full of books and all the money in the cash register. I was drunk, of course. I went back to my house locked all the doors and closed all the blinds and turned away from the world.”

I felt the milky barrier again and this time I realized what I was feeling. It was Joe’s self pity surrounding him like a cloud. It bent him over and drained the color from his face. Looking at him was like looking at what a man must look like through a wavy pane of glass; distorted. A pathetic reflection of what he must have once been.

Joe took another drink from his glass and continued. “One day, I decided to starve myself. I stopped eating completely, but I kept drinking. I guess I was going for an end like Hemingway, hoping that when the police found my body, I’d be slumped over with a bottle in my hand and my distended liver protruding through my skin.”

“But you finally gave up, I guess.”

Joe looked at me with his dark eyes, shooting smoke out of his nostrils.

“How do you mean?”

I laughed and said, “Well you’re sitting in front of me, so I assume you eventually ate something.”

Joe did not laugh. He simply said, “Since that day, not a morsel has passed my lips.”

I asked, “And how long ago was that?”

“Two years.”

“Impossible.” Was all I could say. I could deal with, even appreciate, the extravagant exaggerations of any nut, but to be flat out lied to was offensive.

“You can choose to believe me or not, I don’t really care. You wanted to hear my story.”

No, I thought, you wanted to tell me. You were the one who wrote the damn letter. I almost got up and left, but something made me restrain myself. Maybe it was the unfinished glass of whiskey that Joe had given me. I sat back and let him continue.

“I thought it was strange too, but then something stranger happened. I stopped getting drunk.”

“You stopped drinking?” I asked suspiciously, eyeing his fourth glass of whiskey.

“No,” he said, “I kept drinking as heavily as I had been. I stopped getting drunk. No matter how much I consumed I remained conscious and sober.”

He finished his glass, but did not motion for another yet. My glass was now half empty and I was beginning to feel my head buzz.

“So what then?”

“I began to read the books I had absconded with. I would drink and smoke and read all night, falling to sleep as the sun rose behind my closed shades. I read everything from Fitzgerald to Tolstoy. I am particularly fond of Neruda: ‘Love is so short, forgetting is so long’. I drowned in words and forgot the world even more.”

I took another sip form my whiskey, a long one. Joe pulled out his cigarettes.

“You know what,” I said, “I think I’ll have one of those.”

Joe passed me one, smiling slightly, and after lighting his own, tossed me the lighter. I felt the soft cotton of the filter on my lips and lit the cigarette with Joe’s lighter. The smoke was harsh, but felt good behind the whiskey. When I handed him his lighter back his fingers grazed mine. They were cold. I waited for Joe to continue, but he didn’t. He simply sat there smoking with a repose that suggested that he was done.

I asked, “Well, are you going to tell when you changed?”

Joe raised an eyebrow and said, “I just did. Just now. You’ve heard it.”

I finished my whiskey and waved at the bartender who brought another. I said, “You mean you weren’t bitten? Drained of life and made to walk the night in search of blood?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Do you even have fangs?”

“No more than I did before. But we all have fangs, Dan. Surely you know that.”

Joe went over to the small jukebox and put a quarter it, pressing some buttons. A low but fast-paced piano riff began to play. Nina Simone’s deep feminine voice rang out, deep and shrill against the melody.

Oh sinnerman, where you going to run to? Sinnerman, Where you going to run to?

I shook my head. My cigarette had burned to the filter and the ember began to burn my fingertips, so I stubbed it out quickly. I stared down into my glass, the amber liquid thick and hazy. Joe sat back down and said, “To walk the earth, out of the grace of God, severed from the obligations and the warmth of those you love. This is undead, no?”

The music made my head spin. My mouth tasted bitter and ashy. I had to agree with Joe.

I ran to the devil, he was waitn’. Ran to the devil, he was waitin’.

The next day I tried to put together an article, but nothing would come. I stared at the computer screen and tried to contextualize Joe’s words into an amusing piece, but I couldn’t do it. To make an object of fun out of Joe, I had to see him as a nut whose mind has long since left our dear blue planet. But that’s not what I felt. When I thought of Joe, living only off cigarettes and whiskey, I didn’t think crazy.

I thought alone.

I thought adrift.

I thought free.

I could hear Annie’s soft footprints as she padded about the apartment. The random hiss of her feet suggested she was lost, a ghost shuffling along the carpet as if trying to ignite life through static electricity. My friend Joe, the vampire, I thought, and my girlfriend, the zombie. The idea was so sickeningly funny that I laughed until I had to run to the bathroom to vomit. After, I searched behind the refrigerator for the whiskey only to find the fifth already empty. I tried to remember finishing it, but couldn’t. I decided as I fell asleep that I was going to quit writing the article. Hell, maybe I’d quit the whole fucking job. I never really had a chance at that promotion anyway. My dreams were of amber rivers and paper skin; my heart was the head of a match.

The next night Annie wept. I held her by the window as her small body shook in my arms. The street, cast in a dim yellow light from the lamps, was bare and dark, un-brightened by snow. Annie had dumped most of her pills in the toilet and some on the carpet, and the soles of her slippers had spots of white powder ground into them like chalk. I held her and felt something in me break silently, like a dam giving way. I felt something liquid in me flow into Annie and then run down her face as tears. I thought of the way some animals can anesthetize their victims with their saliva, allowing them draw blood unnoticed. It was how I felt, numb and drained.

Some part of me, a part of me that was obscured now, wanted desperately to help Annie, to love her, to make her whole again. But the prominent side of me, the side that was furiously aware of my own uselessness, had broken open and flowed in me. I thought about that old Bukowski poem “Iron Mike”. I knew it was wrong to allow my thoughts to wander anywhere other than to Annie, but they went anyway. The teeth are never finally the teeth of love. I wondered if Joe had read that poem, and the thought of Joe at this moment filled me with a mixture of self-disgust and something else, lodged behind the sense of love and responsibility that was urging me to be there for Annie. Something obsidian black and quiet as a whisper. It spoke in free form tones of whiskey breath and smoke.

When Annie calmed down, I got her to get into bed and laid next to her as her breathing slowed and she passed into sleep. I knew I should lie there and be her lover, to lie there and watch her sleep until I joined her, and dream of a spring tomorrow. I knew that was what I was supposed to do. But the black obsidian thing kept whispering like a heart murmur. Finally, I gave in, as I knew I would.

When I got to the bar, it was late, for normal people anyway. The regulars were still there, swilling their drinks, uncaring about the hour. Joe was at the same table as the night before, as I knew he would be. He was smoking and drinking a glass of straight whiskey, bobbing his head to the tune coming from the jukebox. I went and sat in front of him. He did not seem surprised.

“Hello, Dan.”

“I don’t believe you Joe. You’re not a vampire.”

Joe looked at me over the smoke from his cigarette, arching an eyebrow. He asked, “Is that really why you came all the way here? To dispute the fact whether or not I am a vampire by some subjective definition?”

“No.” I said and lowered my head. Joe pushed the pack across the table and I slid a cigarette out. He lit it for me.

“I’m glad you came back, Dan. It gets lonely, this life.”

I said nothing. Joe ordered another round and a glass of whiskey was placed in front of me. I sipped at it. The liquid was warm against my throat, soothing. I felt words at the back of my mouth.

“Your wife. Were you happy when you were with her? I mean, were the moments you had with her worth the agony it later inflicted on you?”

Joe looked at me a long time before answering. He seemed to be measuring something; his eyes seemed to calculate the quality of the air around me. Finally he said, “Everything waxes and wanes, grows dark and then light. Everything is cyclical, everything is seasonal. There are no plateaus in life, and so it was with me and my wife. Even at our best times, we stood atop our equinox peering down into the abyss to come, and from the abyss we stared at the coming light. There is no rest from these cycles until we die.”

I laughed bitterly and said, “Well, that sucks.”

We finished our drinks and ordered more. I drank down the second glass of whiskey faster than the first. It felt good against my throat and my head did not even buzz. The black obsidian shard inside of me seemed to soften and spread out like butter melting in a skillet. I lit another cigarette. I looked into Joe’s face, the dark of his eyes. It felt nice to know that I was keeping him company, and it distracted me from having to go home. His words it gets lonely, this life drifted back and I opened my mouth to say something-

An idea hit me, like a poison dart, and the question that had coated its tip spread through me. I put down my glass of whiskey. Joe stood up and said, “Man I have to take a whiz.”

“Joe.”

He turned back form walking to the front door.

“Joe, can you turn others in to vampires too?”

Joe looked at me a moment, and in that moment his face was a landscape of desolation and solitude. It was as if the strings controlling the muscles of his cheeks and lips were cut. Then a smile began to unfold. He turned and was out the door.

I jumped up and bounded after him, almost knocking over a drunken old man. I pushed open the doors and nearly fell outside. He was gone. Joe had disappeared. A deep cold spread inside of me and I looked up. Falling like the quiet ash of ruin was the first winter snow.

Sunset

2011-01-13T11:26:00.003-08:00

“I’m waiting for the sun to set”

“Come on, the shadows are already long, we don’t have to wait anymore. Besides, my mom needs the car at 9:30.”

“I need to be back at my grandmothers at 9. But we have time. The sun is making its final arch. Can you see that thin layer of clouds, the ones that are bright orange?”

“Yes.”

“I think that’s smog.”

“There’s no smog over San Francisco.”

“We’ll maybe some of it came up from L.A. They’re always ruining things for everyone.”

“I highly doubt it. And even if so, how can you tell from the color of the clouds?”

“The more polluted the air, the more beautiful the sunset is. Something about the toxic air refracts the light. They say that sunsets have been getting more beautiful exponentially as years go by, but no one seemed upset by this.”

“Lily…”

“I mean, one day we’re all going to walk outside and drop dead from breathing the goddamned air, and no one’s pulse is elevated a bit.”

“Are you nervous? Do you still want to do this? We absolutely don’t have to do this at all.”

“Yes. I want to. I really do.”

“You don’t look too excited.”

“I can see your boner through your jeans.”

“Jesus, Lily, what the hell is wrong with you?”

“I’m sorry. I walked in on her again today.”

“What? Walked in on who?”

“My grandmother. She was talking to herself again.”

“Oh.”

“She was sitting on the edge of her bed in a nightgown and staring at that big gold clock she keeps on the wall, the one I have to turn by hand every other week. Gran used to do it, but her arthritis is just too bad now.”

“Lily, I’m sorry.”

“It’s the weirdest thing. She was talking at the clock. When I asked her what she was doing she said she was just talking to the lady in the clock.”

“That’s so strange. Is she going back to the hospital?”

“I don’t know. I hope…Ah fuck, I don’t know.”

“Do you want me to take you home?”

“No, I still want to do this.”

“OK.”

“Not yet.”

“Why?”

“I’m waiting for the sunset. Do you have a condom James?”

“Yes.”

“Can I see it?”

“Sure.”

“For her pleasure?”

“Yeah, it’s ribbed or something. I’m not sure, I’ve never used one before.”

“Wow. Back in middle school Me, Suzy Realer, and Amy Killinger used to go to the drug store downtown and sneak to the aisle where they had condoms and steal them. We would take them home and laugh at them, but we never had the guts to open the box. We used to be so close; it feels like yesterday.”

“Suzy is going with that Brett Fisher now. They’re hardly apart; it’s like they’re joined at the hip.”

“It’s a shame.”

“Why?”

“Cause it will end when they go to college. Either they’ll break up after summer or they’ll try to make it work and one will cheat on the other eventually.”

“Jesus, your too cynical for your age.”

“Be quiet and kiss me.”

“You taste like cherries.”

“Gran made cherry pie. She says that kneading the dough is good for her hands. I had some before you picked me up.”

“Tastes good.”

“Do you think I’m pretty?”

“God yes.”

“Are you in love with me?”

“I...I don’t know. I don’t want to say yes and lie, but I can’t say no with certainty either.”

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

“What?”

“I asked if you believed in ghosts.”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t have a lot of straight answers do you James?”

“I guess not. I don’t know a whole lot, I guess. I might have seen the ghost of my dead cat once. He got hit by a car one night outside my house and we buried him in the back yard. His name was Kurt because I was really into Nirvana when we got him. He used to like to nap in front of the big window down the hall from my room at noon because the sun shone directly through it. I could see his shadow around the corner before I walked around. A week after we buried him I walked out of my room at noon and swore I could see a long shadow coming around the corner. But when I got there it was gone and nothing was in front of the window.”

“So you do believe in ghosts?”

“Not necessarily. It could have been a tree limb outside or something. I don’t know what I saw.”

“Why are ghosts so fucking far fetched to everyone?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t mean to start an argument.”

“I believe in ghosts. My therapist said that she believed that sometimes when people get older, and a closer to their own death, the layer between our world and the spirit world gets thinner. She said that might be why Gran is talking to invisible women.”

“Your therapist said that to you?”

“She’s a hippy bitch. I think she smokes pot.”

“Well then why do you believe her?”

“Because when I asked Gran who the lady in the clock was, she said it was Martha.”

“Whose Martha?”

“It was my mothers first name.”

“Oh. My god.”

“Gran hasn’t mentioned my mother since she died 8 years ago.”

“Lily…”

“I only have one memory of her you know, and I can’t even remember what she looked like. We were at a park and she was behind me, pushing me on the swing. It was dusk and I remember asking her to push me higher and higher. I remember the sunset. She told me as she pushed me that you can see heaven during a sunset, but only for a split second.”

“Lily.”

“James.”

“Do you want me to take you home?”

“No.”

“Lily, you’re crying.”

“I know that dumbass.”

“Then why won’t you let me take you home?”

“Because.”

“Because why?”

“I’m waiting for the sun to set.”

Tension

2011-01-13T11:26:00.001-08:00

Jason spat quietly on the ground between his feet, dusty wooden boards that creaked when he leaned this way or that. His saliva was scarlet, and he thought of the roses he had given Charlene just hours before, wrapped in a cone of confectionary paper, the heart shaped petals spotted with bulbs of moistures, sprayed on by the florists. Jason remembered asking the florist how they managed to grow anything with such a deluge coming down on their god-forsaken town. His father’s crops of corn, the cash crop, had all but washed away, along with their tool shed and the tractor. The florist said that they had then shipped in from Minnesota, or else they grew them in a green house. Jason wondered if there were green houses big enough to contain enough corn to make a profit.

“You’re an asshole.”

Jason looked up at Brandon, fifteen years his senior, who stood before him in his usual flannel and overalls. Jason wondered why he still work his work clothes about, even though no one had had any work since the flood. Brandon’s farm had taken it the worse, being the closest to Iowa River. When it overflowed it took all of Brandon’s crops and his house. The only thing the waters left him was a small wooden shed used to house farm hands. Inside there was only a cot with a dusty mattress and a wooden chair. The small light bulb that hung on a chain from the center of the room swung and flickered lazily, almost like a firefly. Jason looked up at it and thought of a hook dragging shadows across Brandon’s contorted face, the beads of sweat rolling down his sallow cheeks. Jason again thought of the pearls of moisture on the rose petals. He looked at the cot and thought of the milky globs of his seed on bare white flesh, the medley of the cots springs and the crying cicadas, the face of Charlene contorted almost like Brandon’s was now, only her mouth curved upwards in a half formed smile.

“Howdy Brandon. How’re the wife and kids?”

Brandon’s hands were big and layered in thick calluses, hands that lost their ability to feel anything softer than a cornhusk years ago. When Jason’s head recoiled back, he leaned forward in the chair and spat scarlet again. He looked at his hands, tied to the arms of the chair by thick rope. The twine was beginning to bite into his wrists. For some strange reason Jason began to think about Jesus tied to the cross, bleeding, waiting to die. Jason, seated next to his father in their Baptist church, heard the preacher talk about how when the centurion pierced the side of Christ with the spear, ending his holy mortal life, the earth was shaken by the fury of God and the clouds gave forth such wrathful downpours that people feared for their life. Jason wondered if maybe, after this whole thing was done, maybe the floods would stop. That would be good, he thought.

Brandon had a speck of white saliva in the corner of his mouth as he spoke.

“You thought I would never find out? Thought I was some kind of half-wit, didn’t you? Thought I wouldn’t notice all the little poems and presents and flowers. You faggot. I never would have guessed you, I’ll give you that. I thought she had more taste, I never thought she go for a sorry excuse for a man like you, head always in the clouds.”

Brandon’s hands shook as he pushed the smooth bronze tipped bullets into the chamber of her revolver, six in all. He pushed the chamber closed and pulled back the hammer.

Jason thought of Charlene again, of the way her dark brown hair lifted like a bed sheet in the wind, and when it was wet got all curly and tangled like the low hanging branches of the willow tree. He remembered how she always smelled of maple syrup and lavender. He wondered, as he closed his eyes, whether she was wearing the dress the color of robin’s eggs, the one that gripped her hips in a way that Jason knew he never would.

Frank in the Night

2011-01-13T11:25:00.001-08:00

Frank started coming to my dorm window sometime after the rains had come, in the middle of autumn’s windy tantrum. My room was on the edge of campus and the closest building to it was an old Irish bar. I always heard a parade of drunken men walking home late at night, singing or arguing at the top of their lungs. It made sleeping a battle, but when Frank started showing up sleep was impossible.

The first time he rapped on my window I sat bolt upright in bed, heart hammering and eyes searching the dark for something to defend myself with, wondering how in the hell someone managed to get to the second floor of my brick dorm building. I flipped on the lights and saw the ruddy face staring in at me, a sloppy grin spread wide. He was old, enough so that he was completely bald, but he had some color in his cheeks, most of it from spirits down the way. He was dressed very nicely in a black suit complete with cumber bun, but no tie. He was reclining impossibly on my very narrow windowsill ledge, one arm draped over his bent knee with an unlit cigarette. His feet were bare and very white; his ankle a porcelain handle on a marble arch.

I opened the window, but kept the screen closed.

“What do you want? Why are you here?”

He waggled his cigarette in front of his face, his sloppy grin unwavering. He spoke with a voice tempered in scotch and tobacco. His accent was low and grating, from an unnamable big city.

“Sorry to be a bother kid, but do you have a light? I’ve had so much Johnny that I’m gonna need a Walker to get home, you know what I mean?”

Frank threw his head back and laughed so hard at his bad joke that he nearly fell off the ledge. I rummaged around in my desk until I found one and lifted the screen to hand it too him. When I did so he swung his legs round and let them dangle inside my room. He plucked the lighter from me and said, “Thanks kid. Mind if I keep the ol’ grape stompers inside for a spell? It’s getting pretty fucking cold out there.”

He lit his cigarette and handed me the lighter back, blowing smoke over his shoulder into the night, looking at me curiously. He looked as if he recognized something and was trying to search out the memory of where in his smooth head.

“What’s your name kid?”

I shuffled awkwardly and said, “Joshua.”

He extended his hand and said, “Frank. It’s good to meet you Joshy boy, and may I say thank you kindly for you hospitality. One rarely finds such kindness in the world anymore.”

I sat in my desk chair and put on a jacket to ward of the cold air wafting in from the outside. Frank took a drag and said with smoke trailing out of his nostrils, “So what are ya Josh? A student or something?”

I told Frank that yes, I was a student at the college. He asked what I was studying and I told him Literature. He nodded, taking another drag, not really caring.

The next night I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed with all the lights on, afraid of what I would see in the in the proceeding darkness were I to turn the lights off, what horrible neon faces I would have burned into my retinas from the 60 watt bulb. I heard the tapping and saw Frank at my second story window, unlit cigarette dangling from his lips, drunken grin spread across his thin face.

I opened the window and asked, “Frank, why did you come back?”

“The light was on.” Frank threw his head back in racking laughter at another of his bad jokes and asked for a lighter. I gave him one. The night went on and even though I had class the next morning I got no sleep.

I shuffled to my literature class the next morning with heavy bags under my eyes and my head buzzing with caffeine. This class was a burden I had no right to bear. We were on romantic poets and it meant an hour and a half of mind numbing stanza after stanza. It meant Zachery.

Zachery was an apprentice of poetry, as he put it, and he refused to let us call him Zach. He always wore a torn jean jacket, smoked cigarettes he rolled himself, and had shaved half of his head while letting the other half grow long.

“I’m trying to deny the symmetry that people expect when they look at me, force them to re-evaluate their perspective on what they see.” He told me once. He said with an air of someone who thinks everyone is looking at them and tailors what they do in accordance with that. The thing was when ever anyone did look at Zachery all they saw was the stink lines from never showering or washing his clothes.

I hated Zachery.

I hated him with more than just the hatred I reserved for all poets, I prayed that some malignancy stemming form bad hygiene would rot all of his teeth out and give him a form of leprosy with accelerated symptoms of physical degeneration. And the bastard would probably still think he was special. He would peel off a flake of rotting skin from his arm and declare it the fabric of existential decay. And then he would write a poem about it. And my hatred would compound.

I got to the classroom and saw him sitting on the stairs leading to the door in acid wash jeans split open shin wise like an gutted animal, the orbs of his headphones covering his ears and blasting some dissonant noise. When he saw me he smiled and pulled one head phone off his ear. He liked to talk to me before class, I suppose he found me good company. I don’t know why.

“Hey Joshua my friend, how are you?”

“Just Josh is fine.”

“No man, your name is your identity, you’ve got to accept all of it.”

“If you say so.”

Zachery pointed to his headphones and said, “My friend just send me a copy of his bands first album. They’re from L.A. It’s pretty rad.”

I rubbed my eyes, already burning with exhaustion. I said, “That sounds scintillating, Zachery. Class start soon?”

“They’re called Hemingway’s Right Kidney. Their whole theme is the beauty of a good death. I think the drummer is a Norse pagan. This song is called, “I drink myself to Valhalla.”

“Isn’t ‘good death’ a bit of an oxymoron? Or maybe just moron, I’m not sure.”

Zachery let out a clipped laugh patted my arm with what I can only assume was camaraderie. He said, “No man, death, especially for artists like ourselves is something transcendent you know? It brings meaning and humanity retroactively into everything we do. Shuffle off our mortal coil and all that.”

“Hamlet was terrified of death. He wears black through out the entire play and is visited by the ghost of his dead King father who is burning in purgatory.”

Zachery looked at me blankly. I truly hated him.

Frank vomited in my room that night. I opened the window to light his cigarette and he let loose a stream of amber colored puke all over my floor. He swayed drunkenly and mumbled a half formed apology through his sloppy grin, a permanent fixture on his face. I cursed at him but he didn’t move. I got some water and a towel and began cleaning it up.

Frank blew smoke over his shoulder and said, “You should really get some sleep there, Joshy boy, you’re pretty cranky when you’re tired.”

I looked up from the floor and said, “Fuck you Frank.”

“You know, I read somewhere that your brain needs sleep to turn short-term memory into long-term memory. It’s a crucial stage of conversion or something like that.”

“You’re not helping.”

“I’m just saying that sleep is sometimes the only thing that keeps you anchored to reality. Cause I mean, if you can’t remember anything it’s like it never happened right? I mean all you got is the photos you took and the things you jotted down. But you can never get it all I suppose and you still go to bed a child and wake up an old man with no idea that you were in this rip tide of time to begin with. I see it all the time.”

He continued to smoke as I wiped up vomit.

One Friday I went out with some friends, the few that I kept up with. I was known as a bit of a recluse, but I spent a relative amount of time with a small circle of friends. They took me out to a bar that night because they thought a change of scenery would help with my insomnia. I didn’t tell them about Frank. They wouldn’t get it.

We went several miles to the next town over and pulled into the first brightly lit tavern we saw. Wooden bar with torn leather stools, faded pool table, dart board, jukebox, and a pretty diverse crowd of clientele. I had a few beers, played a few rounds of pool and actually began to relax. I kept drinking and one of my friends slipped some quarters into the jukebox and got some music playing. The people in the bar appreciated our energy and our youth, smiling over their shoulders at us when one of us made a particularly nice shot and let out a shout. I began to have a good time.

An old townie motioned to us to come to the bar and bought a round of shots for us, saying, “Enjoy your young days as much as you can, cause when you’re dead all you get to take with you is your memories.”

We nodded somberly and knocked back the whiskey. I thought about what Frank had said about remembrance and reality, and I decided that he was wrong. What happened stuck like a tattoo, building a picture of my life whether I remembered it or not, and it would always be that way. I grinned at the quiet joy of creating a good memory with some good friends. I kept drinking.

We played a few more rounds of pool, but my cue kept missing the cue ball and knocking the other one out of place. One of my friends laughed and patted me on the back. I smiled at him and went to the bar for another beer.

I sat on a stool to wait on the bartender. I smelled someone’s perfume. It was sweet but elusive, a dark smell like incense in the depths of a temple. I looked over and saw a beautiful woman sitting next to me, stirring her drink with a red straw and looking sideways at me. When she saw I was looking she smiled and threw her hair back over her shoulder. It was chestnut brown.

“You look like you’re having a good time tonight.” She said still grinning. She wore a fair amount of makeup, but she wore it well and applied it with a highly skilled and patient hand. Her eye shadow masked the intent behind her eyes.

“Are you from the college in the other town?”

Her perfume was dizzying. I was afraid that it would withdraw like a ghost and never be sensed again. I felt my friends watching me but I ignored them. The bartender brought me my beer and spilled a little of it down my hand giving to me, but I still tipped him more than I should have. I asked her if I could buy her a drink.

“What’s your name?” She asked me, taking the drink I bought her and setting it next to her other one.

“Josh.”

She laughed softly, almost as if there was something naïve simply in my name. I asked for her name and she told me, but I couldn’t quite catch in over the din of the bar. It was something musical and I could almost see the accent over the letters.

I asked her to repeat it and she leaned across the counter fluidly and spoke into my ear. I could feel her breath against my neck and I had a feeling she knew it.

“I don’t think I could pronounce that if I tried.”

She said, “It’s Mayan. My mothers ancestors came over from Guatemala a long time ago.”

She leaned back and surveyed me with her dark brown eyes. I thought of Mayan priestess in scant white robes wielding a jagged stone knife seductively over her head.

We left a while later to go to her place, the drink I bought her untouched on the counter. My friends didn’t stop me. She left the lights off in her apartment and we went to the bedroom and fell on each other. I could feel my body buzzing with alcohol and I touched every dark and curving part of her body without restraint. I grabbed her hair and huffed her perfume like smoke and she moaned. She pushed me onto my back and climbed on top of me, ripping at my clothes; then hers. I closed my eyes and imagined her in the white robes holding the knife. I wanted her to plunge it deep into the center of me and pull me open, rip out my heart and display it for the gods.

Both of us naked, I felt her grasp me between her legs, panting savagely.

“Wait.” I said. I didn’t have a condom on. I couldn’t see her face as she reared above me in the dark, so I didn’t know if she heard me or not. Soon I didn’t care.

I walked back to campus the next morning, all the way across two towns. It took me almost an hour to get back, but I was in a daze the whole time. I left the woman in her bed, wrapped in her blankets naked and snoring. She had looked much older in the morning light, the lines around her eyes and mouth more pronounced. Her make up had smeared, making her face looked displaced and unnatural. The odor of sex and sweat had overpowered her alluring perfume. I left with out waking her up.

When I got back to my dorm I went straight to the showers. I stayed in there a long time, just letting the water flow over me. My head was throbbing and my stomach felt volatile, as if just by thinking about it I could cause myself to vomit. My whole body felt grimy. As the daze began to lift from me, banished by the steam of the hot water, a weight settled in my stomach along with the knowledge of what I had done.

The rest of the day, I felt as if minute parasites were crawling in all the crevices and nooks of my body. Phantom itches and pains followed in their wake. I could not concentrate on anything nor could I force myself to eat. The sun set with agonizing slowness.

That night I sat at my computer, face washed out by the blue light. Frank sat next to me on the windowsill, smoking, white feet dangling jovially inside my room.

“I missed you last night Joshy boy. It was a long night with out you and I had nobody to light my cigarette.”

He made a mock sad face and mimicked a tear rolling down his cheek with a long bony finger.

I was near trembling. I opened a web browser and began typing into the search bar.

“Oh STDs, nasty stuff my friend,” Frank said, “You know 65 million Americans have or will get an STD in their lifetime, and one in two sexually active people will contract an STD by the time they are 25. Sure you can cure some of them, but the shame and emotional trauma is another thing entirely. And you can get the little bastards even doing the less kinky things, if you get my drift. Sometimes you never know your infected either, because a small percentage go asymptomatic for a lifetime.”

I clicked on a link.

“With Chlamydia you get the classics, burning when you piss, puss coming out of your Johnson like an icing syringe. Can cause infertility and cervical cancer with women. No bun in the oven for you sweetheart. Oh, and its responsible for blindness worldwide.”

The weight in my stomach pushed itself deeper into my gut. I continued to click on links, the blue light of the computer compounding the planes of my face.

“Gonorrhea isn’t too exciting, maybe just a little sterility, but you take a round of penicillin and bada-bing bada-boom, your good as new. Syphilis! Now there is a sophisticated venereal disease! An infection worthy of a king or a great artist. Infectious lesions, fever, rashes, malaise, and eventually insanity. Really classic stuff. Oh but Herpes, there’s a spooky one. Incurable, lasts a lifetime, and it’s the most common sexual disease. And you can get that one just from kissing somebody at the wrong time. You never know when painful sores will erupt from your body like little volcano’s.”

I shut my computer and went over to my bed, Frank’s eyes following me as I went.

“You didn’t look up pregnancy Joshy boy. If you didn’t have a rubber on when you hit that, you’ve got a fifty fifty chance of knocking her up. Did you know, that there are women out there that appear to be common barflies, but are actually sperm-jackers? They lure young bucks like yourself into bed and purposely get themselves knocked up, either for the child support money or just cause you got nice genes and a pretty face.”

I stared at the darkness of my ceiling, neon faces burning out of the darkness. Frank’s cigarette ember was the only point of light in the room. He said, “Women huh? Load of trouble right? You try to make an honest connection with somebody and they go give you a rash on your man pole.”

Frank sighed and stubbed his cigarette out on my windowsill, evaporating into darkness.

“At least when you die you won’t have to worry about all this anymore. You’ll be a big ol’ pile of dirt with a big old load off your mind.”

I didn’t sleep that night.

The next day Zachery’s words reached out to me through a film of fog and seemed to grab a hold of me.

“You have pressed your lips into my skin. They have left a print like a leper’s sore. You make me fall apart.”

I turned to look at him, almost convinced I had fallen asleep and that this nonsense was my subconscious. Zachery was looking right into my eyes and kept talking.

“The four corners of your bed are like a compass. They point into the seamless night where our naked bodies fizzle electrically like stars until our light burns out.”

Zachery took a step further and put a hand on my arm dramatically. He continued, “Our velocity is so strong that we are together only a moment. Everything is stardust and to dust we will eventually return.”

I stood speechless, waiting for the pale smile of Frank to seep onto Zachery’s face and for my world to plunge into an abyss of night. My hands were shaking at my sides. Zachery’s face was so close to me that for a horrible moment I thought he was going to kiss me. But then he stepped back and said,

“Do you like it? I wrote it for a girl that I had sex with this weekend. She was beautiful but I don’t want it to become a thing, you know? I was hoping a poem might make things easier.”

I was suddenly back in the real world and out of my sleep deprived stupor. My hatred for Zachery welled up in me like boiling mercury and I couldn’t see straight.

Suddenly something gave inside of me and I felt the anger leaving, vaporizing. I had come to a quiet understanding. I hated Zachery because he seemed without fear, whether through arrogance or ignorance it didn’t matter, the result was the same. While he slept peacefully with the thunder of L.A. punk music hammering his eardrums into early failure, I was left to fear the shadows in my own bedroom, silent and certain.

Before going into class Zachery added, “It was amazing sex though. I hope she was on birth control because I didn’t have a condom on me. When I give her the poem I should ask.”

Later in the week I walked to the supermarket over in the next town. I had tried to wash my clothes, only to take them out of the machine and realize I had not used any detergent, resulting in wet, but not clean clothes. The walk was long but I thought the fresh air would be good for me. I imagined myself lumbering down the street like some sort of zombie. It would not have surprised me if one the drivers in the cars zipping by saw my listless, shambling gait and swerved to put me out of my misery. The idea both terrified me and prodded the coals of humorless laughter low in my belly, the same coals that were given life by the exhalations of my paranoia. The image of lying in the street, body broken and bleeding, darkness mushrooming in front of my eyes and swallowing every fiber of by being, even the screaming dread until there was nothing. I shuddered and kept walking.

I got to the store around midday and walked in, the florescent lights burning my eyes. The store was mildly crowded, the men and women and children pushing shopping carts up and down the aisle like mice in a maze, only seeing the endless parade of labels and color coordination. I thought briefly of Sisyphus shouldering his boulder for eternity and grimaced. I wandered around the store until I saw the row of detergent. I shuffled towards it, almost getting run over by a man who was simultaneously immersed in his grocery list and pushing his cart. I said sorry even though it was his fault. Breaking the concentration of people shopping is something reproachful.

Suddenly a familiar smell wafted past me. Smokey and sweet. Not for the first time I wondered if I had slipped into a dream. I leaned to look into the horizontal aisle, the one lined with milk and cheese and meat and saw her. Her chestnut brown hair lay limp on her shoulders as she browsed the dairy. I expected the fear to rise in my throat, but nothing happened. Something was different. She did not move with the grace I remembered, and her curves and angles were all off. Her figure no longer resembled a sweet obsidian blade. Something about seeing her trying to decide between skim and two percent eroded the princess. All her mystery was banished by the sterile florescent lights of the supermarket. She was just another mouse in the maze.

I realized I couldn’t remember her name. She began to move towards the butcher section of the store and I followed with half formed intentions of saying hello and getting her name again. But I fell back, following unseen behind racks of jerky and potato chips. I saw her go up to the butcher, a man with dark skin clad in a white apron, shirt rolled to the elbows, and white plume of a hat. When he saw her a smile spread across his face and he came around to the front of the display cases to hug her gently and kiss her on the cheek. They spoke low and intimately. After a while he returned behind the cases of meat to weight and wrap her order. When she tried to push several bill towards him and shook his head and held up a large palm. The woman gave a small smile, acquiescent but somehow dignified. She blew him a kiss and she was gone.

I wandered up the butcher. He saw me and said in a foreign musical voice, “What can I do for you sir?”

I asked, “Do you know that woman that just walked away?”

The butcher cocked his eyebrow at me and I said, “I met her last weekend in a bar and she accidentally left an earring there.”

He regarded me with a look that suggested that he saw through my half formed lie and was seizing up my age and not liking the estimate he arrived at.

“She is my sister. I will take the earring for her.”

“I don’t have it on me.”

The butcher sighed and said, “Listen, I don’t know what happened between you two, but let me give you some advice. Leave her alone.”

I began to shake my head madly and tried to tell him that another sexual encounter was not my intention but he raised a hand to silence me.

“I love my sister, and I say this with nothing but love. She is fucked up right now, and does not need some frat boy with a hard on chasing after her.”

“What happened to her?”

The butcher seemed surprised by my sudden sincerity and he leaned over the counter.

“She had a fiancé who was an illegal. He came here for work and they met and were engaged. But He got pulled over for running a stop sign and was deported. He had only been here for five months and he still owed a lot of money to the coyote that got him over the boarder. He could not get work back home to pay off the debt. He disappeared. My sister never heard from him again. Weeks later an article in the back newspaper told of a boarder murder. It mentioned her fiancé’s name. They had gutted him like a pig.”

I had no words. I scanned the array of meat in front of me, sitting lamely in ice, and felt nauseated. The man shook his head and said, “The world is full of animals and butchers.”

I lay sprawled out on my bed, staring at the ceiling. Frank sat at my window, smoking. Neither of us spoke, just sat there feeling each others presence. I was trying to remember the last time I had gotten a good nights sleep and I couldn’t. I had to go back to childhood and that meant imagining a memory of peace.

Frank looked out at the horizon and said, “Looks like the suns about to come up. Why don’t you come over here with me and we’ll watch the beauty of it all. It’ll make you feel better.”

My minded flitted back to poetry class, to something that had filtered through the fog in mind. Wordsworth’s Ode to Intimations of Immortality from recollections of early Childhood. There is a line about the child’s birth compared to the sunrise, and how even at its genesis it is faced with the inevitable sunset. But the tragedy was not the rising or the setting. It was high noon, or the light of common day. This was when man had nothing but nostalgia for something beautiful he can no longer feel because he had learned too much. All he had was the terrible gravity pulling him forward towards oblivion. I remember Zachery’s face in class, blank and confused.

Frank flicked his cigarette and flipped his feet outside, over the windowsill. With his back to me he said, “Don’t worry kid, everyone dies. People have been dealing with it for a million years, and so will you.”

I sat up and Frank was gone, only a faint gray light where he had once been. I laid back and resumed staring at the ceiling, feeling the cogs of my mind beginning to slow down. I wondered if my fear would ever inspire something out of me as beautiful as Wordsworth poetry, even if I didn’t understand it. Probably not.

“Bastard.” I said quietly aloud. I felt my eyelids droop and I fell in a grudging sleep.

Flight

2010-09-21T23:01:00.000-07:00

Peter watched the tide crash just feet from where he sat on the shore. He dug his toes into the sand and breathed in the late summer breeze rolling off the sea. The long strip of beach where he sat was cloaked in a womb of fog, making either end murky and indecipherable. The sun was an opaque disk in the sky occasionally gifting the beach with rays of warmth. The drive up had been like entering into a place made from clouds and grey horizons, where the salty air only enforced the belief that the place was merely a dream. Peter always liked to think that death was a lot like driving to Half Moon Bay, a place between places.

Cassie sat behind him stabbing a jagged piece of driftwood into the sand by her feet, blond hair blowing idly in the wind. Her large sunglasses made her round face look benignly alien, except when she smiled.

“So what did Dean and Fil say they were doing today?” Cassie asked. She and Peter knew each other from high school, but their friendship had mostly been sustained through the bonds of other mutual friends. Summer was almost over and their remaining friends had all decided that a trip to the beach was necessary before they left for college again.

When the day in question came around, Peter and Cassie were the only ones to respond and they went in spite of their other friend’s absence. They talked all the way to the beach and it was easy and light, gossiping about people from their high school or old relationships. They were amiable towards each other but kept their distance, and when Cassie’s cell phone rang Peter politely turned the music down and tried his best not to eavesdrop.

“Dean is still working at that Italian Deli and Filbert never answered. He’s probably still sleeping, the lazy bastard.”

Cassie laughed and looked up at the grey sky. A formation of seagulls crossed overhead and made an easy landing on the sand nearby. Peter thought that such creatures were made for a carefree life, that even their bones were hollow as to keep things weightless. He was glad such things existed.

“They are missing out for sure. I’m going to miss California when I go back to college. “ Cassie said. She took off her sweatshirt and pulled her legs up to her chest, her cut off jean shorts hugging her thighs tight. Peter noticed that she was beginning to develop a Midwestern accent.

He sighed and said, “I could live out here, right on the beach, buying fresh fruit from the farmers and building sculptures out of sand. I think I’d start another one of those Christmas tree farms, where they grow all those pine trees.”

Cassie said, “I love the Christmas trees. My dad and my sister and I used to come out here every Christmas and cut down our own tree. It was my favorite part of the holidays.”

“I used to come out here with my family and pick pumpkins for Halloween. My dad took me down to the beach once. I got too close and a wave pulled me out. It was so cold that it actually hurt. My dad waded in after me, clothes and all. He ruined his cell phone and had to make business calls from the house phone all week.”

Peter rubbed his bare forearm as if remembering the autumn froth and laughed.

“It’s weird, but actually I miss that stuff.”

Cassie nodded in agreement.

They were quiet for a while and Peter watched the far off waves meet and meld in the horizon, seeming to spell out letters no one would ever decipher. He began to lazily pour little handfuls of sand over his feet until it looked as if his legs ended at the ankles. He smiled at the simplicity of it.

“Hey Cassie can I bury you?”

Cassie, who had been off in her own thoughts, looked at Peter with an odd mixture of surprise and fear, as if he had physically shaken her to wake her from her reverie.

“In the sand,” Peter added.

Understanding dawned on Cassie. She relaxed and shook her head saying, “I’m actually really claustrophobic, I would start freaking out after, like, one handful.”

Peter cocked an eyebrow and said, “I don’t remember you ever being claustrophobic back in high school.”

Cassie shrugged and said, “I guess it really started this past year in college. I don’t know. Maybe it was the cramped dorm rooms or something. It got so bad that I couldn’t use the bathroom with out all the doors open.”

Peter said, “I’m sorry, that sounds very inconvenient.”

Cassie gave a half smile and shrugged.

Peter said, “Then will you bury me?”

Cassie smiled and nodded, scooting closer to Peter as he began to dig into the sand. Cassie began scooping sand out in handfuls as Peter flung dirt out of the growing hole on either side of him. She thought he looked like a child might, bent over a sand box. She smiled and continued scooping.

After creating a noticeable dent in the surface they began talking about the only thing they had in common; high school. Cassie had been an athlete, spending most of her time at swimming practice and with her steady, safe boyfriend. Peter had always been a quiet type. He read novels and listened to grunge and had aggressive opinions on classic rock and its undeserved decline. He made silent love confessions to girls he was invisible to until one of them finally took a chance on him and took away his virginity in the back seat of his car before prom. Now Peter’s bed was rarely cold at his liberal arts college where the women drank his intellectual pretention like wine. They both had coexisted peacefully in their separate bubbles in high school, but had little in common after that. So they talked about the classes they had shared.

The most interesting one they had in common was a freshman theology class taught by an obviously homosexual old man with a thick mound of white hair and a bulging paunch. He’d been jovial and so the class had been alright for a religion class at a catholic high school.

They both laughed at the old Richard Gere and Charlton Heston movies the teacher used to show at the end of week.

Cassie sighed and said, “I don’t think I learned a damn thing in that class. Do you remember anything academic from that class at all?”

Peter sat up, contemplating the pile of sand falling between his fingers and said, “I remember one thing.”

“What?”

Peter began digging again and said, “The Ban.”

“I don’t remember that at all.”

Peter shrugged and said, “It was when we were studying the old testament, I think. Remember how all the different groups of people were always killing each other and stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“Well Mr. Gold told us that The Ban is what they used to do to defeated villages. The invading army would defeat and sack the defeated kingdom and The Ban was sorta protocol for like a hundred years. They would kill all the men, rape the women, mutilate the cattle, and burn everything down. And then just leave; leave behind a smoking pile of ash and that was that. I never got it, I mean, Hurray we won so lets burn everything. Pointless destruction. All that culture lost instantly.”

Cassie stopped digging. She asked, “What happened to the women when they left?”

“What?”

Cassie stopped digging and sat up. “You said the soldiers would rape the women and then burn the village down. Do you remember what happened to the women when they left?”

Peter thought a moment and then shrugged. He said “I don’t remember, I guess they just left them to die or burned them along with the buildings. I think these guys were only one step up from Neanderthal.”

Cassie didn’t say anything for a while, just looked at the sea while Peter continued to dig until he had to lie on his stomach and slide his arm down to reach the bottom. She began digging again with renewed fervor.

“Ouch. Damnit.”

“What’s happened?” Peter asked, sitting up to look at Cassie, who was sucking on the tip of her right ring finger.

“I tore a part of my fingernail digging. Don’t worry about it though, I’m fine.”

“Let me see.”

Cassie presented him with her finger and Peter cringed. The left side of the nail had been ripped almost to the cuticle, and blood had run down in a small rivulet and mixed with the sand compacted under her remaining nail. It looked painful. Peter noticed that all of her fingers were red and raw looking.

“Jesus Cassie that looks pretty bad, are you sure your ok? I might have a first aid kit in my car.”

“No really I’m fine. Lets just keep digging.”

Cassie renewed scrapping at the inner walls of the hole, using only the clawed fingers of her uninjured hand, her body bobbing like some desperate machine, digging into the earth.

“I think it’s deep enough now. Hop in.” Cassie said, sitting up quickly and gazing down into the hole.

Peter did and she began pushing mounds of sand over him. She reared up on her knees after Peter was mostly under and begun to fling sand at him. A stray round slapped his shoulder and some grains got in his eyes.

“Hey careful, you’re getting some in my eyes.”

Cassie sat with Peter watching the sun begin to make its descent into the ocean. Cassie had her knees pulled up to her chest and clung to them tightly. The tide had risen and almost reached them, sometimes sending small arms of water up the gap of shore between them, icy now with the lack of heat. The fog had grown thicker as the temperature dropped, beckoned down from the sky. A light breeze drew out gooseflesh along her arms and shins. Peter was just a head in the sand next to Cassie, his fingertips breaching the ground as if he were underwater.

Peter was complaining about his latest conquest at college. He was saying that she was a fanatic feminist who, after sleeping with him, would rant and rave about women’s rights and rape statistic and work herself into a frenzy.

“She gets all in my face about it, like I’m the representative for the entire male population. I support women’s rights; I’m not an ignorant bigot. You don’t need to get mad at me!”

A silence fell on them and they both looked back out to sea. Peter shook his head and some spare sand fell into his face.

“Shit I got sand in my face again. Can you help me out?”

Cassie looked over at Peter and said, “Can’t you get it yourself?”

Peter looked at her and waggled his fingers uselessly, saying, “Not really.”

She leaned over, quickly brushing away the sand with the sleeve of her sweatshirt before leaning back.

Finally Cassie said, “You know, my friend in college was raped.”

Peter’s eyes grew wide. He said, “No way.”

Cassie nodded. “She went to this party alone and got really drunk, like so drunk that she was stumbling around and stuff. So these two guys that we sort of know offered to walk her to her dorm. When they got there she opened the door and they pushed her in. She was too drunk to fight.”

A seagull gave a terrible shriek as it flew overhead, a black phantom in the dusk. Peter’s brows were furrowed like he didn’t understand.

“So, are they in jail, these two guys?”

Cassie shook her head. “No, she never told any one but me and this older girl on the swim team. The other girl told her she deserved it because she had a reputation as a slut. I still see the guys around campus.”

Peter was almost rising out of the sand as he said, “That is so completely and totally wrong. I mean shit like that isn’t supposed to happen.”

Cassie shrugged.

“Well what the hell did you tell her?”

Cassie looked of into the fog, as if trying to conjure up the memory of her friend, drawing her feet closer to her. She thought a moment before saying, “I told her to get some help, but she wouldn’t listen.”

Peter was shaking his head and he muttered, “She should still say something, and those guys need to be locked up.”

But his words fell among the grains of sand and were lost.

Peter and Cassie were driving up highway 1 silently. Peter was still scratching sand away from behind his ears and Cassie was curled up in his seat, watching his headlights cut cones of light into the winding highway. She turned to him and said, “I think we should get together more often. It’s a shame we weren’t closer in high school.”

Peter smiled and said, “Yeah, I would like that.”

They both turned their thoughts back the chaos of fog rushing at them. Cassie looked troubled. Peter looked over.

“What’s wrong?”

“Can you roll down my window?”

“Sure thing.”

Peter rolled down the window and the cold air rushed it, blowing Cassie’s hair back and filling the car with the smell of the ocean.

After a moment Cassie asked, “You said that armies used to implement The Ban for over a hundred years right?”

“I think, yeah.”

Cassie turned to him and said, “What made them stop?”

Peter said, “Someone came around with a revolutionary idea, that instead of killing the losing side they could absorb it. So when his army would defeat a civilization they would offer them membership in his growing empire and the only requirement was that they had to learn his language. Soon he didn’t even have to fight his war, people began to join up voluntarily. And in that way he conquered the known world.”

“Who was it?”

Peter said, “Alexander the Great.”

Cassie chuckled and looked back at the road. After a few minutes the fog started to dwindle and they emerged into a clear summer night. The rush of a clear world was jarring. They looked ahead in the night and saw it.

A spotlight coming out of the middle of a large stretch of fenced off field. Something was flying in the center of the light.

“Look at that.” Peter said. Cassie’s eyes grew bright as they drove past it following it in awe. Peter looked back at the road.

A model airplane, remote controlled, was doing summersaults in the night sky, illuminated by the spotlight. It spun and twirled like a bird. It shot down and leveled out and went parallel with Peter’s car for almost a full minute before it pulled up abruptly. It shot straight into the air, growing small in the spotlight, as if it were trying to breach the sky and reach God himself.

Do Ken Dolls Have Assholes?

2010-08-25T07:25:00.000-07:00

Jeremy Smith sits in the doctor’s office in his tighty whiteys and socks with the holes in them, looking down at his protruding belly and thinking how he is beginning to look like a mushroom more and more each day. The doctor comes in wearing his white coat and the glasses that Jeremy is convinced can see through skin and right into one’s soul. He thinks that it was better back in the days of witch doctors and shamans because there were no false pretenses.

What can we do you for today Mr. Smith? The doctor asks in a tone that really means he is really saying why in the name of God’s left testicle are you in here again for the fourth time this week, I have a hot little hard body next door who needs botox in her labia and you’re keeping me from her.

Same as always Doc, I need you to open up that bag of tools and do the ol’ fix’er upper.

The doctor opens up his manila folder with whatever alien text they use to communicate and his beady little eyes flick through it quickly, uploading information like a computer.

Mr. Smith, you told the nurse that you are suffering from slipperiness of the brain.

The doctor gives him the same look that the foreman at the factory gives him whenever he stops working. Jeremy works in a honest to god Toy Factory and assembles the small plastic limbs of dolls and actions figures that will be distributed to all the youth in America. The foreman asks Jeremy why he has stopped attaching perfect little Ken heads to perfect little Ken bodies, and Jeremy tries to explain that he is afraid sometimes that he is really the doll being assembled and that he cannot look at the sickly white plastic bodies anymore. They’re not even really white, they’re a nauseating pink, the color of a shaved rat. Jeremy hates the factory and the little illusions they make and distribute to little kids. He would quit and stay at home with his Mother if they didn’t have such great healthcare.

The doctor takes off his soul glasses and looks Jeremy in the eyes, I guess because the gyration of his soul was making him dizzy.

What do you mean by that Mr. Smith?

Jeremy scratches at his bald spot and comes away with blood and dandruff underneath his unkempt fingernails. When Jeremy was little, before his mother’s accident made her the vegetable on wheels, she always used to chase him around the house with a nail file and sit on him to keep him down while she filed his nails to clean little half moons. To calm him during this painful process, she would sing God jumped over the moon tonight, he stubbed his toe and began to cry, the rain fell down on the meadow, and that’s why all the flowers grow.

I just need something to keep in place Doc, I keep sleep because I’m worried it will slip out of place in the dark.

The doctor nods quietly and puts his soul glasses on and goes over to the counter. He opens a drawer and withdraws a large syringe and a bottle of clear liquid. Jeremy thinks oh my god he is going to stick that right in my head, straight through my skull and euthanize me right here in this goddamned office in my goddamn tighty whiteys, who does he think he is, God?

And then Jeremy remembers why the song his mother used to sing always gave him nightmares. It wasn’t the idea of a giant walking around the moon and pissing in the meadow. It was the idea that God was child, stubbing his toe and crying like a brat. Because, Jeremy thought, if God was a child than we must be his dolls, no different that the rotten pink messes put together in the toy factory. And what child truly loves his toys, even for a day?

Minos Screaming

2010-08-07T16:30:00.000-07:00

Red awoke suddenly from a terrible dream, sitting up violently and looking towards the sky. The black limbs of the Manzanita tree under which he sat hooked themselves into claws down at him and he almost let out a scream. The quiet huffing of his horse brought him back to the land of the living and Red let out a deep sigh. He looked around his lonely camp; the charred wood and last few remaining coals from his fire, his boots sitting near his hip, his leather chaps folded across a stump with his Winchester and saddle laying atop it, his horse tied to a high branch of the same Manzanita tree which had tried to claw his face only moments before, pawing the ground sleepily. The sky was beginning to grey with morning light, so Red got up and walked down the hill to the little creek to wash up, his bare feet kicking up red dust as he went.

Red rode into town when the sun was at its apex, his rifle sitting across his lap. He always kept his pistol by his side, even when he slept. The town of Santa Fe loomed ahead, seeming to jut out of the scarlet dust of the land like the very boulders and mountains that surrounded it. The buildings were either wooden beam or adobe hut. The largest one of these was the cavernous cantina. Red dismounted and tied his horse to a tie post outside of the Cantina and walked in. It was very dim inside and it took Red’s eyes a moment to adjust from the blaring sunlight of the outside world. When they did he saw several customers strewn about the room, some at the scattered wooden tables and some at the long polished bar. They all had the look of ragged but devoted drinkers. In the corner an old Mexican was strumming a thick-necked guitar and singing a quiet song in Spanish. His large hat was pulled low over his pock marked face, a musician blind to his audience. The barman was engaged in a low conversation with one of his customers, smoking a large brown cigarette, leaning on the smooth surface of the bar. Red walked up and sat down next to the customer, a thin man with a rough beard and several missing teeth, and leaned his Winchester against the stool by his right leg. He looked at Red fleetingly and stood up with his drink and found a vacant table. The barman was also a Mexican, but a much younger one that the guitar player, with smooth brown skin and oiled hair.

“Give me something strong amigo.”

The barman produced a bottle of dark whiskey and a small glass. He poured him a shot and Red downed it. The barman poured him another. His face was carefully neutral, but his brown eyes scanned Red’s face quizzically, resting on the large scar down his left cheek briefly. Red slipped a pouch of tobacco from his vest and a slip of paper. As he rolled the cigarette he said, “The old man in the corner, he of any relation to you?”

The barman nodded and said, “He is my uncle. He has gotten to old to run the bar. His hands shake too much to pour the men drinks with out spilling. The doctors say he has an illness in the bones.”

Red lit his cigarette with a match and looked over at the old man in the corner. His fingers looked like the gnarled brown branches of some barren tree as they skittered up the neck of his instrument.

“He don’t play the guitar too badly.”

The barman nodded and poured Red another drink, saying, “Yes, my uncle is very… how do you call it? The belief in spirits and fate?”

“Superstitious.”

“Yes, he is very superstitious. There is a belief in my hometown that music calms the angry spirits that ail those in poor health. I think it is good for his hands, at least for now.”

Red nodded and knocked back the whiskey. He asked, “How long you been in Santa Fe, amigo?”

The barman looked at Red carefully, eyeing the Winchester as well. There was a double-barreled shotgun underneath the bar, already loaded, but he did not reach for it. Red’s hands were crossed in front of him, resting on his elbows loosely. The barman said, “I have been here long enough to know who will be able to pay for their drinks at the end of the night.”

Red nodded, seemingly pleased. He said, “As you may have gathered, I am new in town and I’m looking for an old friend. He is a shorter man with hair even blacker than yours. He has a strange accent and two silver front teeth.”

The barman nodded slowly and began to pour Red another drink, saying, “My friend, I am running a business here for the sake of my poor uncle. It may not appear so, but I do my best to run a clean, honest business and to stay out of trouble. This is not to say, of course, that all of our clients are of the same moral standing, and sometimes have old friends such as yourself come in asking for information. I make it a point to keep my bar a safe place. It is bad for business to get mixed up in clients trouble.”

Red nodded and sipped at his whiskey a moment. When the glass was empty he reached inside his vest and slowly removed a long shard of stone, sharpened to jagged edges and fastened to a wooden handle. Several feathers hung from the hilt. Red slid it across the bar to the barman and said, “Take a look at this a minute amigo.”

The barman picked up the dagger cautiously as if it were a snake he was not quite sure was dead. He turned it over in his hands, felt the sharpness of the blade with his thumbnail, and handed it back to Red. He took it and placed it on the bar in front of him. He said, “I took this off a dying Pueblo. I was in a conscription of men paid by the scalp to wipe out the Pueblo presence just south of here, in the cliff dwellings. We followed them all the way down into Mexico and shot them down when ever we caught up with them. We’d heard stories of how tough Indians are, how difficult it is to fight them out in the wild where they are in their natural element. Like trying to fight sharks in the water. But these Indians were starved and weak. Ranchers had run them off the surrounding land and claimed the Buffulo for themselves. The Indians had next to nothing to eat for weeks before we started in on them. They were easy to pick off. On the way back up we shot down a couple Mexican travelers and scalped ‘em like they was redskins, to get a little more coin.”

The barman was staring at Red as if his hair had caught fire. His eyes flicked down to the shotgun, but he didn’t dare reach for it. Red leaned in and said, “Now you either tell me what I want to know, or the only music you’ll have to sooth the spirits will be the screams of your dear uncle as I remove each one of his fingers.”

The barman sighed and said, “There is an inn at the far end of town, just past the public well. The man’s name is Euri. You will find him there.”

Red removed the dagger from the counter and replaced it with a large silver coin. The barman looked at it a moment before picking it up. “I do not have change for this.”

“I know,” said Red. He grabbed the bottle of whiskey and flipped the barman another silver coin.

He got up from his stool, grabbed his Winchester and began walking to the door.

“Senor,” the barman called after him, “This man you go after, he does not take kindly to surprises.”

Red looked back and smiled. “Well then I’d better knock first.”

The dark haired man sat in a wooden chair as he lit a fragrant cigarette. He finished wiping his hands clean on a pocket rag and stomped out his match. Outside of the house the cicadas shrieked in rising and falling volumes, an ocean of noise. The cows fenced in the pasture nibbled grass and chewed their cuds, indifferent to the events inside the house. On the floor in front of the dark haired man was a man whose hands and feet were bound with rope. Blood ran from his broken nose and an eye was beginning to swell. A handkerchief was stuffed in his mouth to gag him. Several men with cloth rags pulled around their faces just under the eyes were walking around the room, pulling open the drawers of dressers and over turning bookcases and chests. Anything valuable they found they threw into a burlap sack. The house itself was not impressive in size or worth, it was a simple ranchers house build from the aspen and sycamore with only three rooms. But it was sturdy and it had known warmth and honest labor in its days. The dark haired man exhaled a cloud of smoke and leaned back on the table where the china was stilled laid out from supper. A candle flickered on the center of the table. When the dark haired man spoke his accent was foreign and almost lyrical.

“We are very grateful towards you, Rancher, for giving us sanctuary, as well as your very charitable donation to our salary.”

One of the men, the biggest with an ape like forehead, asked, “Hey boss, how long do you think till the Sherriff and his men find our trail?”

The dark haired man drew on his cigarette thoughtfully and said, “The Constable is an imbecile. I believe we will have ample time to reach safer stations. If we make no more unnecessary stops.”

The big man nodded and resumed plundering through the ranchers possessions. The other man in the party of nameless bandits was smaller in size than the big ape now going through the good silverware near the stove, but his eyes gleamed with a light that was utterly devoid in his counterpart. He carefully inspected each item before placing it in his sack, quickly calculating its rough value and deciding whether it was worth stealing. He lifted a rug in the corner of the room to inspect the thread work and place of origin when he saw a square door in the floor with a circular metal handle.

“Boss,” he said, “We have a cellar door over here. Do you want me to go down there?”

On the floor the Ranchers eyes bulged wildly in his head, rolling desperately from the dark haired man to the man standing over the door. The dark haired man considered it for a moment, the waved it off saying, “I do not think it would be worth giving the sheriff a few more minutes to catch our scent.”

The Rancher seemed relieved for a moment, and then the dark haired man addressed him, smiling to show his silver front teeth.

“Listen my friend, you look like someone who is not in a position where they would be very receptive to small talk, and I am not a man who particularly enjoys…how do you westerners say…shooting the shit? So I am going to get right down to it. My men and I are going to take everything valuable you own, I am going to kill you, and we are going to burn your house down.”

The Rancher made a deep, gurgling noise in the back of his throat and began to struggle furiously against the ropes holding him. The dark haired man got up smoothly and delivered a swift kick to the Rancher’s ribs with the toe of his black boots. There was a sharp crack as several of the Rancher’s ribs broke. The Rancher grunted in pain and tears began to run down his cheek and splatter on the dusty wooden panels beneath him, leaving dark spots. The dark haired man continued,

“But while you seem a man who does not appreciate small talk, you do seem a man who appreciates the truth. So while I am sure that you understand that I am killing you so that you will not aid the brainless constable in his pursuit of us, I can only guess that you can see no reason for me to set fire to your home. The truth is that there is no reason for me to do this other than the immense pleasure it will give me. You must not think that I have any sort of personal vendetta against you Rancher, not at all. It is simply that when I see a match, I must strike it against a rock. It is the way of things.”

The dark haired man snapped at the large apelike man, who went into one of the bedrooms and came back with an oil lantern. The dark man turned the wick up and opened the glass cage. He pressed them ember of his cigarette against the wick and a flame erupted. The Rancher was crying freely now, looking at the dark haired man with eyes that pleaded for mercy. The dark haired man held up the lantern and said, “Do not lose heart my friend, there is some consolation. Back in my home town across the sea, there is a tale of horrible creatures who avenge the death of wrongfully murdered souls. They are said to sleep deep within the earth and to have faces so rotten and terrible that to look upon them is to be damned. They bring down the fury of the sinned and deliver vengeance. One day my friend, I may find myself standing face to face with your fury, and then you will be able to do what you could not in life.”
The dark haired man removed his pistol from his side and shot the Rancher through his temple. The Ranchers blood spilled across the floor, quickly covering the dark tear streaks with scarlet. The two masked men left the room as the dark haired man holstered his pistol and threw the lantern into the corner, where it shattered and released a gush of flame that began licking its way up the wooden walls.

Outside the three men looked on as fire began to fill the few windows in the house. The night was filled with the sound of the wood screaming as it released air and moisture, as if each beam of the house was giving up the ghost in agony. The ape like man watched it and yawned, inserting his large hands in his pocket, his sack of stolen goods by his side. The smaller man turned to go retrieve their horses from the tie post behind them. His foot caught on something and he stumbled slightly. He bent to pick it up and examined it by the moonlight. It was a small cloth figure with a face painted on it with black ink. The man realized it was a doll. He looked back at the house with rising horror. He shouted, “No!” and ran back to the house. The dark haired man tried to stop him saying, “Don’t be a fool” but the man elbowed past.

He reached the smoldering front door and the heat began to push back at him. He could feel his eyebrows beginning to singe. He reached desperately out to the door with his right hand and a lick of flame lashed across his forearm, igniting his shirt sleeve. The man screamed in pain and fell back off the porch and into the dirt, rolling around over his burning arm. He eventually managed to snuff the flame in the dirt and lay there, the flesh of his arm blistered and bleeding.

The apelike man came over to him saying, “What in the hell got into you?” He helped the smaller man to his feet and over towards to horses, saying, “He’s got to get to a doctor boss.”

The dark haired man lit another cigarette reflectively and said, “Mount up gentlemen, we have wasted enough time dilly dallying as it is. Our friend must tend to his own wounds for now.”
They mounted up and rode off with the smaller man riding slightly behind them, bent over his useless arm, his hunched frame cast into long, deformed shadows as the house continued to burn away behind them.

Red stood outside of the last room at the end of a hallway. The Inn Keeper, an elderly man named Joseph, stood in front of him with a tray. On the tray was the bottle of whiskey from the Cantina. Red had his Winchester shouldered with the barrel pointed down. He leaned against the wall just next to the door. Joseph’s already trembling hands seemed to quake beneath the tray, causing the bottle to rattle. He looked at Red, pale-faced. Red nodded and knocked on the door for him. Joseph said in a raspy voice, “Mr. Euri, its Joe.”

A voice from behind the door seemed to growl, “What do you want?”

Joseph looked at Red again as if unsure of what to say. Red nodded, encouraging him. Joseph said, “The barman said you overpaid your tab last night. He has sent you a gift to compensate.”

The sounds of footsteps were heard and the door slid open a crack. Dark eyes peered out, seeing Joseph. When they lighted on the bottle of whiskey, the door opened fully and Euri beckoned
Joseph inside, snatching the bottle. The blinds to his room were pulled shut and the murk within was heavy with a strangely fragrant cigarette smoke. The bed sheets looked as if the sleeper had pulled them this way and that, almost tying them into frantic knots. On the night stand and around the bed were many empty bottle of varying liquor. Euri sat on the edge of the bed and uncorked the whiskey, taking a large pull on it. His gun lay loosely in his left hand. He said, “So the barman claims I underpaid, is this correct?”

Joseph shifted nervously, saying, “Yessir, I believe that’s what he said.”

Euri took another large pull on the whiskey and said, “The man is a fool. I did not pay my tab at all last night. I woke in my bed with my pocket still full of the money I intended to pay him with.”

Euri took another swallow and grimaced at the burning in his insides. When he spoke next his words were slightly slurred, “But the stuff he sends, it is good.”

Red stepped into the doorway with his Winchester raised leisurely at eyelevel, saying, “I’ll be sure to let him know before we leave town.”

Euri looked up. He didn’t seem to see Red for a brief moment, staring blankly at him. His dark hair had streaks of gray in them, and there were patches where the hair seemed to grow thin. His face had a few days growth on it, and the skin sagged around the eyes and mouth. His belly protruded over his pants, and his abdomen seemed painfully bloated. Then his eyes flicked to
Joseph with hate and he said, ”You lying old bastard. I would kill you for this.”

Red loaded a round into the chamber with the little handle and said, “Take it easy now Euri, we wouldn’t want to shoot up this good gentleman’s place of business.”

He took a step closer to Euri so that the Winchester was inches from his head. He said, “Euri, you are wanted by the state of New Mexico for multiple counts of murder and theft. You’ve got quite the bounty on your head.”

Euri growled, “It is the way of things.”

Red reached into his pocket with one hand, still holding the Winchester level with Euri’s head, and removed a pouch of money. He looked at Joseph and said, “Thank you for help Joe, I hope this makes up for the trouble I’ve caused.”

Red tossed Joseph the pouch. The moment the bag was in the air Euir grabbed for his pistol and swung it towards Red, who saw it out of the corner of his eye. He dove to the side just as Euri pulled the trigger, and slammed the butt of his Winchester into the side of Euri’s chin. Euri was knocked back and lay unconscious on the bed, his pistol thudding to the floor.

Red fell back against the wall of the room with his hand pressed against his side. Blood was welling up around his hand. Joseph ran over to him and put an arm around him to support him.

He said, “Oh buddy, that don’t look good at all. You need to get help.”

Red shook his head and said, “I’m fine. I only got three days to collect my bounty. Just get me some bandages and a rope for this sonuvabith right here.”

Red rode his horse slowly out of Santa Fe and into the desert. He was hunched over and holding the reins with one hand. With the other he clutched at his side where a large white bandages was wrapped tight. In front of him, with his hands bound with a coil of rope, walked Euri. A rope ran from Red’s saddle to around Euri’s neck. Euri’s chin was black and blue, and great torrents of sweat ran down his olive skin. Red had on his hat low to block to sun, his Winchester lying across his lap.

They traveled like that for most of the day, leaving behind a spidery trail of eight footsteps, like a giant beast had wandered into the desert. When ever Euri fell down Red would wait patiently for him to get back up. If he didn’t get back up as quick as Red saw fit, he would yank on the rope around his neck to encourage him to get up faster. Sometimes Euri would fall down and wouldn’t get up, even when Red yanked on the rope several times. When this happened Red would dismount slowly and lurch over to him with a canteen full of water and let him sip from it until he could stand again.

At sunset they came to a scraggily old tree where Red tied up his horse. He ordered Euri to make a small fire out of the fallen branches. They sat by the fire and Red cooked some of the salted meat from his pack. He didn’t bother tying Euri to the tree, they both knew that only death waited in either direction with out water and food. They ate in silence, Red leaning against the tree to alleviate some of the pain in his side. When they were done Red’s side was still hurting so he took out a small bottle of whiskey and took a swig. Euri said, “I would be very grateful for some of that.”

Red looked at him and said, “Why should I give you some of my whiskey? What do I get out of it?”

“I have twelve dollars in my pocket. It is yours.”

Red laid a hand on his Winchester and said, “I could just take the money from you and have the best of both worlds.”

Euri’s eyes darkened and he said, “This is true. But I have something you can not take from me.”

Red raised his eye brows and asked, “What might that be?”

“A story.”

Red looked at him a moment, then tossed him the bottle. Euri caught it and began to guzzle the whiskey. It looked as if he was going to drain the whole thing, so Red raised his Winchester lightly and said, “Hey.” Euri stopped himself and gasped for air. He reluctantly tossed the bottle back. He was quiet a moment, then he began:

“A long time ago in my home country, there was once a young fisherman who was respected most among all the prominent men in the village. He married the most beautiful woman in town and settled down in a nice home atop a hill overlooking the sea. Everyone thought that the ocean would bring the two good fortune, and for a time their life was as pleasant and as constant as the rhythm of the tide. But one day, men from across the sea came to my country, men with darkness in their hearts. The young fisherman was out at sea on along trip, far from his native shore and had no knowledge of their arrival. But his beautiful wife saw them from their hilltop home. She tried to warn the village but there was nothing to be done, as their village was small and the main land was too far away to help. The dark men ravaged the small village, killing most of the young men and raping the women. They burned the houses and stole all the goods the village had to offer. When the young fisherman returned home, he was greeted with death. His home was nothing but a pile of ashes. But he cared nothing for these things as he searched frantically for his beautiful wife, praying to the gods that she had been spared the villages terrible fate. But the Gods were deaf to mortals anguish that day. He found his beloved in the center of the village, slain where she stood trying to warn the town of the coming horror. The young man wept greatly. What few villagers survived helped him bury his wife among the dozens killed. The man rebuilt his home but it was not the loving hearth it had once been, but a living tomb for the heartbroken man. Any other man would have sat in his home and rotted away, but this young man was not like any other man. He would not sit back and allow his beloved to be taken so easily. He set out in his boat and sailed to the west. He sailed for days and nights with out sleep, he sailed until he had all but sailed into the setting sun. Just as the man’s provisions ran out he reached the hollows of the earth and descended into the depths. The man crossed many subterranean rivers; a river of sadness and a river of fire before he came to a great Gate as black as obsidian. The man had ventured to the land of the dead. This place was made only for the souls of those passed on, and as the young man was still alive his presence attracted the attention of the Dark One himself. He appeared to the young man and demanded to know why he prematurely sought to pass into the place of judgment. The man exclaimed that he did not seek to pass, but to retrieve his beloved who was unjustly taken from him by murderers from across the sea. The Dark One’s cold heart was made to feel warmth at the young man’s determination, but he knew his quest was futile, for no one can come back once they have passed over. He told the man to go, and live the rest of his mortal life. But the man refused. He pledged his soul to the Dark One if he would but give him his beloved back. And as all Gods do, the Dark
One allowed the young man to reap the consequences of his obsession. He allowed his wife to appear before him. The young man fell to his knees and wept at the sight of her pale figure wrapped in burial clothes. He kissed her cold hands and lips. He sailed home and tried to again started the happy life he had once had. But no one can truly come back once they has passed over, and his beloved came back with a cold fire where her life had once been. She began to fade away like a shadow, but not before she gave birth to the young man’s son. The young man, his heart doubly broken, cursed the abomination that was his son, born from womb of a woman already dead.”

The men were silent a moment. Red watched the fire dance in Euri’s eyes as he contemplated the story. Somewhere a coyote howled solemnly. Finally Red asked, “What did they name the baby?”

Euri flashed his silver front teeth and said, “Oh a handsome name I am sure.”

“You sure can spin a good tale for murderin’ bastard.”

A jolt of pain shot up Red’s side from his bullet wound, and his stomach did flips. The whiskey almost came back up, but he managed to keep it down. Euri narrowed his eyes at him and said,

“Your wound, it does not look so good. I would recommend you do not travel for a while.”

“Shut up and go to sleep.”

In middle of the night Red woke up with a scream. He was covered in a fine sweat and his gut was throbbing with pain. He gripped his gun and looked over at Euri, who was asleep next to the coals, sleeping as if without sin. Red managed to lay back down and slip back into fitful sleep.

They did not start traveling the next day until the sun was very high in the sky. Red rode hunched lower than he had been the day before, and they had to stop before the sun had finished its rotation in the sky.

After they had made camp Red lay prostrate next to the fire, his head resting on his pack. His hands were pressed to his side tenderly, and his shirt was pulled up to expose the bandage. The once white cloth was now rubbed with red with the dusty earth, the signature of the desert on the travelers garments. The spot around the bullet wound was almost black with dried blood and the pupil of the wound was oozing out a thick yellow pus.

Euri again sat across from Red with his hands bound, eyes bloodshot from lack of alcohol. His eyes jumped from the bottle of whiskey in Red’s hand to his wound, his teeth grinding. Finally his eyes rested on the wound and he said, “My friend, you will die if you don’t get assistance. Please allow me to remove the bullet at least.”

Red groaned and said, “No fuckin way compadre. There is no way I way letting you near me with any sort of sharp object just so you can gut me and escape.”

Euri said, “If I wanted to kill you I would just wait for your wounds to take you and leave. It would be a lot less effort on my part.”

“Yeah, but you’d see no sport in that. You enjoy killin’.”

Euri raised an eyebrow, not in protest but in curiosity. He asked, “Why are you taking me in my friend?”

“To collect the bounty on your head.”

Euri picked up a stick in his bound hands and began to trace unintelligible symbols in the dirt.

He said, “I saw what you paid the treacherous Inn Keeper with. No one with that kind of currency is in need of money badly enough to die trying.”

Red shifted slightly on his pack. His head was beginning to throb from the heat of the fire. He had not been able to eat his dinner. He said, “You might be right.”

“Then why such valor?”

Red was quiet. Euri said, “Your weapon, the one you struck me with, it is a Winchester, yes?”

“Yeah.”

“I hear the wife of the man who made those claims she is haunted by the spirits of people those guns have killed. They are not precision weapons. They are made to slaughter.”

Red groaned again and clutched his wound tighter.

“Where the fuck are you going with this.”

Euri finished tracing in the dirt and looked up at Red.

“You have killed before.”

There was a silence. The coyote called again, scared and hungry. Then Red said, “Yes.”

“You have killed many men.”

“Yes.”

“And Women? Children?”

“Yes.”

“For Money?”

“Of course.”

Euri’s eyes glared with an angry light, He said, “Since when does a wolf betray one of his own pack?”

Red sat up despite the pain and looked at Euri across the fire.

“I am nothing like you.”

Euri’s eyes widened with understanding. He said, “Ahhhh, it is clear now. You have developed guilt. Have you found God suddenly?”

Red shook his head. The pain was growing in his belly.

“What am I to you? Redemption? An act of contrition?”

“No.”

Euri threw his stick into the fire angrily, yelling, “Then why? Why have you sought me out?”

Red slowly raised his right arm slowly and peeled back his sleeve. Euri’s eyes grew wide at the sight of Red’s naked skin. The forearm was a deep red, the skin mottled and shiny with scar tissue. The burn left its searing lick almost to the elbow. Red said, “It’s why everyone calls me Red.”

Euri said, “It was you, at the rancher’s house…”

Red said, “I’ve done a lot of bad things Euri, but what you did that day, that was soulless.”

Euri fell quiet. Red sat up slightly to look over at him, saying, “I’ve been pulling the trigger since I was twelve and never thought twice about it till that day. Then two years later I start having this dream. It starts and it’s like I was just spit up by the ocean, I can taste the salt in my mouth, only it taste more like tears than salt water. All I can see is red, not the fire and brimstone you hear ‘bout in the bible, but there are these walls that reach up to an endless ceiling, in an endless cavern, and its all bathed in this throbbing red light, as if the whole place is some kind of heart for a terrible animal. And the screams. People everywhere, frightened and lost, screaming and running even though there is no where to go in the horrible red maze. I see men and women who might’a been married once, holding hands and running, horrified, the women crying they eyes out. And that’s when I see them, those…beings coming around the corner. They’re dressed in white gowns and they have the faces of young babes. But they have these horrible, gnarled horns, and these long black talons. They might have been angels once. They are barefoot and that is somehow more obscene that everything else. I turn to run, trying to be anywhere away from these horrible beings. I turn a corner and that’s when I see him. He’s tall, as big as a house, and his skin is all black and bumpy like a horny toads. He has a crown of horn on his head and he’s looking at me with these eyes. There is an entire man in his mouth, and he’s just chewing and chewing and all I can hear are the horrible screaming. And then I know, I know that if god could allow something like this to exist, that a place like that is waiting, that we are all truly damned.”

Red began shaking all over, clutching his gut furiously. He rolled over and vomited blood into the dirt. Euri got to his feet and stumbled around the fire. Red’s eyes had rolled into the back of his head and he was muttering, “Oh god, not again, not again.”

Darkness crept over Red and the last thing he saw was Euri’s silver teeth as he stared down into his face.

When Red awoke he was still lying on his back. The sun was high in the sky and he squinted against it. He tried to sit up but weakness rippled over him and he just lay still. He felt dizzy and his mouth felt like there was sand in it. He heard footsteps and suddenly Euri was standing over him. The rope that was binding his hands was gone and he was wearing Red’s riding clothes. The Winchester was in his left hand, hanging idly by his side. He knelt down and dropped something small and hard on Red’s chest. Red rolled his eyes forward and saw a small black ball with a smashed side to it. Euri spoke, his breath smelling of fragrant cigarettes, “It was deep, but I managed to get it out with out doing to much harm.”

Red tried to speak, but he was too weak. His whole body seemed to be in pain, but it was dull and not as penetrating as before. Euri stood up and said, “I am taking your gun and your horse, but I am leaving you what is left of the whiskey. I awoke this morning to find I no longer crave the drink. I find that our time together has invigorated me. I am sorry we had to meet in such…volatile circumstances; we might have been lucrative partners once again.”

Euri stood up and put on Red’s hat, saying, “I wish the best of luck to you my friend. I have left you your pistol as a gentlemen’s courtesy. For the coyotes of course.”
He was gone. Red lay there, the heat of the sun soaking through his clothes. He suddenly felt drowsy and his eyelids slid halfway down. Red managed to slide a hand into his pocket and grasp the pistol. The heat really began to sink into him and he thought wearily the heat ain’t so bad. He closed his eyes and the sun shone red through his eye lids. Not as bad as that, anyway.

Beats Conference Paper

2010-05-17T19:50:00.000-07:00

New York-1954

Lee calls me at home. It was dark and I could not sleep.

“Hello?”

“Hey kid, it’s Lee. Can I pop on over for a spell. I got something big. I’m talking revolutionary. It’ll knock your socks off.”

“Sure, Lee. Come on over.”

I smoked a cigarette while I wait and put on some George Shearing, the old stuff, before he traded away his sweaty, key tapping Godliness for a couple more green backs. I shuffled across my scarce apartment in socks and khakis, shirtless. I was very thin now and my ribs grew pronounced as I danced, swimming in the almost languid rhythm of the music. Man, I think, this guy has got it.

I heard a rap on my door, so I opened it to find Lee standing in his overcoat with a large brown package under his arm. He stepped past me saying, “Hey kid, nice tunes.”

He laid the package on my splintered coffee table and shed his outer layer, plucking a cigarette from its depths.

“Lee, what madness have you brought into my house? What secret is underneath that brown packaging?”

“First off,” Lee says standing over the package dramatically, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, “This ain’t no house. Second, this is a Holy Icon.”

He tore off the brown paper. A desperate breeze blew in the open window and blew it off the table, leaving the Icon alone. My eyes fixated on it like a moth to a flame. The colors mesmerized but also offended in their rebuttal of pattern. The icon held the debris of the world (cigarette butts, nails, coins, keys, buttons, matches, sticks, dirt) and it held it dearly like a child. It was an experience just standing in its presence, an experience that could never be replicated. The swirling depths of the rectangular obelisk seemed to throb along with George Shearing.

“What…what is this?” I asked breathlessly.

Lee exhaled a cloud of smoke and said, “It’s called Full Fathom Five. They say a person can control the weather with this little beauty. And it apparently has a strong affect on six of the erogenous zones but I’ve yet to get it up.”

I ran a finger across the canvas and alternating landscape of texture. It made my heart beat irregularly so I removed my hand.

“Lee, where did you get this?”

Lee took one last drag on his cigarette and put it out right in the middle of the painting. It sizzled, made a black spot and was quiet. I howled in fury at the destruction of such beauty and leapt at Lee.

“You mother fucker! What are you doing? Are you mad?”

Lee grabbed me by the shoulders and slapped me quickly across the face. He said, “Calm down kid, your missing the point?”

“What?”

“We have a sacred mission. We’re collecting Holy Icons. It’s a dangerous mission and we will probably be dead the both of us by the end. But so it goes.”

I ran a hand through my hair and sat in my one piece of furniture, a ratty arm chair. I said, “What so dangerous about it?”

Lee leaned over the painting and looked me gravely in the eyes. He said, “This icon right here. I stole it from Dr. Benway.”

The Prophet Jack, great wandering seraph, lover of the mad and the wretched. He was hungry to Dig what could be dug so he rode what ever wheels he could get on and drove them straight into the ground. He knew that the car was ore than metal and rubber and gas, but a thing that took the direction out of the drivers hands and let the twists and turns of the road take over, a mindless being of asphalt, with out destination. It’s like pouring paint over a canvas or spattering it violently with the brush like the bloody tip of a spear. The dripping language of the Junky god, so overcome with the shakes and the nods that they can create nothing but chaos. But, Jack, oh jacky-boy, rider of women, lover of men, the only ones for him were the mad ones, the ones who were mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawned or said a commonplace thing, but burned, burned, burned like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars. His words carried the uninterrupted rhythm of the jazz cats.

When I first encountered the writing of Jack I was overcome with the freeness of the words, the lack of structure or constraint. It was no surprise to me when I learned that the first draft of “On the Road” was typed on a single roll of paper and written in a three week burst. Jack was fanatic about experience and even more so about writing. He captured the voice of all his friends and the exhilaration manifest in Neal Cassidy, characterized as Dean Moriarty. The never-ending search for something that could not be put into words, that Jack and his beatnik friends simply referred to as “it” resonated with me. The revolution of the soul, and the use of narcotics as a way to temporarily shed the logic of our mortal coil and try to grasp it. Suddenly so many books that I had read before began to make sense. Jesus’ Son by Dennis Johnson, Post Office by Charles Bukowski, The Dangerous Lives of Alter Boys by Chris Fuhrman; the seemingly pointless self-destruction and madness in search of something greater took on a new light. I have long had the thirst for the adventure of the open road and longed to dirty my clothes with the grime of experience, but never had to words to describe what I was look for. Turns out I was just hungry for “it”.

New York-2010

David sits back in his chair and sighs, rubbing a hand across his cheek, prickly with stubble. The office is crowded by book shelves, so full of books that not even a sheaf of paper could worm its way between the many spines. David imagines that while he personally would feel almost suffocated by the many works of fiction, the older man sitting across from him might feel among the best of company.

David leans forward and says, “So Joe, explain that car metaphor to me again. Why is the car so quintessential to On the Road?”

Joe sighs and takes of his large spectacles, rubbing the space between his eyes contemplatively. Joe has a mustache and wears a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows, khakis and a tie. David eyes his glasses almost jealously. He thinks that with all the knowledge that has passed through the lenses, the glasses must be more akin to a talisman than visual correction.

Joe says, “To the Beats, the car is an extension of the self that can conquer distance. It also allows experience to happen at high speeds. So that is why in On the Road Dean drives like a fucking maniac; it’s an enhanced consciousness. It brings up the question of control because he may be the one who is driving, but it removes conscious thought.”

David says, “Sort of like Dionysus, when he possesses you?”

Joe shakes his head and says, “Not really. Remember, Dionysus blurs identity. This is about experience. It’s an adaptation of the Odysseus figure and instead of ancient Greece, 1950’s America becomes the repository of the range of possible experience.”

David sighs and says, “But I still don’t get it. Where are they trying to go? What’s their destination?”

Joe says, “It’s not about the destination, Dave. It’s not where they’re going, its why.”

“I’m still not getting it.”

“Look, Dean and Sal decide to go to Denver to look for Dean’s father. But what happens when they get there? Nothing! They drink and drive and do drugs and have copious amounts of sex with each other. They’re not looking for something that is tangible. Not something Logical. “

David leans forward and puts his hands over his face, mumbling, “This is so difficult for me.”

Joe cocks an eyebrow. “Why?” He asks.

David sits up and looks at Joe a moment. Then he says, “Because…because I’m a writer. And I see the whole world through the lens of a story, through plot and metaphor and symbol. Whenever something happens to me I think ‘How could this be a story about something larger’. Everything has to have a deeper meaning or purpose to it. There has to be a point or I get lost. I need to have my feet planted on the ground or I just fall into space and freeze to death. I’ve had nightmares from this stuff.”

Joe says, “So I surmise that Naked Lunch was quite traumatic for you, yes?”

David swallows and nods. He retrieves the book from his backpack, holding it between two fingers like a dead rat.

“This,” he says, “made me feel like I was addicted to Heroin. And now I certainly know how to use the stuff if I were ever so inclined. I mean there was nothing sustaining, no plateaus for me to rest at and strive for. Just a stream of vulgar, nightmarish prose kept me awake in the middle of the night.”

Joe smiles and says “So it threw off your normal patterns of thought?”

“In a big fucking way.”

Joe takes of his glasses again, this time not contemplatively but emphatically. He says, “That’s what Burroughs was trying to do, what all the beats were trying to do! It was a revolt against the conformist, logical way of thought. Their works were sacred because they invited chaos. Just like the car, it took the conscious control out of their hands and put it in the hands of some other. That’s why Jackson Pollock would fling paint at the canvas, it removed himself for the creation of it. They were to channel, as Kerouac says, it. Come on Sal we got to go find it. Find what? IT!”

Although he’s not sure what it means, David says, “A Spiritual Revolution.”

Joe nods and says, “You’re interesting in that you really believe in thought. You believe that if you think enough and read enough you will become a better writer and finally begin to understand the world.”

Joe nods. David shakes his head and says, “I don’t think I’ll ever figure it out.”

Joe smiles, pats him on the shoulder and says, “You just have to go look for it.”

New York-1954

We were in Lee’s run down Ford, driving through the pouring rain.

‘We’re making tracks for San Francisco kid.” Lee said as he lit another cigarette. He drove with one hand hanging loosely on the bottom of the wheel, controlling the speeding vehicle with lazy jerks of the wrist. He would speed past slower cars, sometimes even mounting the sidewalk, and running red lights. The other drivers would extend their middle finger into the rain and Lee would just snicker.

“Lee,” I said, “What were you thinking stealing from Dr. Benway? You’re going to get us killed!”

Lee shrugged and said as he nearly clipped a pedestrian, “Probably. But we have a sacred mission.”

“What are you talking about?”

“To collect Holy Icons.”

I ran a hand over my unkempt hair and lit a cigarette. “Lee, what are these Holy Icons? You a speaking a language on a wholly different plane of existence than the one I am on.”

Lee grinned and fished around in his jacket pocket, producing a small silver case. It looked like a cigarette case. He said, “Take some of this, then you’ll see what’s going on.”

I opened it up. Inside was a small pin, a eye dropper, a spoon, and a small bag of H. I eyed Lee and he only grinned. I poured the bag into the spoon and spat into it. I held my lighter underneath the spoon until the muddy concoction bubbled. Then I sucked it up into the eye dropper and, after puncturing a small hole in a vein on the back of my hand, I squeezed the H into the bloody hole.

The rush. The dive. The awaking.

I looked at Lee. He was different. He looked the same only his normally sallow skin had taken on a different tint. It seemed phosphorescent. He had a small flame dancing on top of his head, like a small candle suspended in the air.

“Lee,” I said, “You’re on fire.”

Lee grinned and said, “Man, don’t I know it.”

I looked out of the window at the people walking down the sidewalk bundled in their raincoats. Only they weren’t people. Where people had once been, giant bipedal roaches stood, holding their raincoats close, antennae flicking, proboscis dripping slime and intestinal acid.

“The world has become a cabal of subterranean vermin.”

“Now you have true sight.”

I looked in the back seat where the icon sat, our stolen passenger. Before the H it had been a shadowy canvas, but now it glowed with an aura of protoplasmic divinity. I reached out and touched the aura with my finger. An electric shock ran through me, standing my hair up on end. My dick grew hard. I withdrew my finger and sat straight in my chair again.

“These Holy Icons really have it, don’t they Lee.”

“You betcha kid.”

Alan Ginsberg was one of the first to jump to fame as the beat generation was being discovered. His poem Howl was the epicenter of the very famous obscenity trial in San Francisco, where he eventually won the case. The poem is dedicated to Carl Solomon, a friend and publisher whom Ginsberg met in a mental hospital. The first line of his poem can be said to describe his close group of friends, and what it meant to be Beat: I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix.

Perhaps because poetry is normally picked up on a different frequency than I can detect, the work of Ginsberg allowed me to start swallowing the sense of chaos that the beats revered. Like in On The Road, there are allusions to the members of the illustrious gang. He was the Buddhist prophet of poetry.

New York-2010

David sits in a dank basement. He holds a beer in one hand and a smoldering cigarette in another. The music is blaring and people are milling about all around him. There is a game of beer pong going on in the corner, and a small crowd has converged on it, vocalizing excitedly the game play by play. David’s friend Fitz comes over and sits next to him, snatching the half smoked cigarette from his limp hand.

“Hey.” David says lethargically.

Fitz exhales and gives him back the cigarette. He is a pale, blacked hair kid who has turned large portions of his body into a canvas for tattoos. He says, “What’s going on with you Dave? You look down.”

“I’m just thinking about it.”

“About what?”

“Never mind. Hand me another beer.”

Fitz tossed him one. They drink in silence a moment. David then says, “Have you ever read any of the Beats”

Fitz says, “Yeah man, I fucking love them. Some of my favorite writers ever.”

“Why do you like it?”

“I just found the writing to be really beautiful. I mean, I love all the beat writers.”

David downs his beer and crushes the can. He says, “I have a hard time reconciling my self with it.”

David sighs and puts his head on his knees. He says, “It all just feels so elusive.”

Fitz puts a hand on his shoulder and says, “What to know what helped me get it?”

David sits up and nods. Fitz stands up and motions for him to follow. They walk up the narrow staircase, ascending out of the basement. Fitz says, ”Are these the stairs where you fell and cut your hand open?”

David grimace and say they were. In reality, his hand was split open by a knife blade in the hand of a girl that might have almost been drunker that he was. It had been shortly after reading Naked Lunch. He had egged the girl on; he wanted her to do it. He wanted to make sure that he was real. Fitz had driven him to the hospital when his girlfriend, who was pre-med, decreed that he would need stitches.

We mount the stairs and into the main floor of the house. Several kids from David’s college live in the house together, but they are all down stairs getting drunk. Fitz leads David into on of their rooms and shuts the door behind him. They go over to a glass table and he kneels in front of it. David follows suit. He pulls something out of his pocket and tosses it on the table. It is a small bag of cocaine.

Fitz pours some on the glass table and begins to grind it up with the broad side of his school ID. He then begins separating it into lines. He looks at David and says, “You ever done this stuff before?”

“No,” David say.

He smiles. For the first time David realize that his teeth are crooked but beautiful. They fight the order the mind expects. He says, “I’m proud to take your coke cherry.”

Fitz rolls up a dollar bill into a narrow tube and inserts on end into his nostril. He snorts one of the lines carefully and quickly. He taps his nose and hands David the dollar bill. He hesitates, then takes the bill and snorts. Instantly after finishing the line David sits back quickly and rubs his nose vigorously, making little choking noises as if something were trying to crawl down his throat. David says, “Ah shit is running down my throat, that tastes disgusting. Good God.”

Fitz laughs and askes, “Well, how do you feel?”

David stops rubbing his nose and looks at Fitz a moment. He opens his mouth but the words don’t come yet. The he says it, “I feel fucking fantastic.”

New York-1954

Lee and I sat parked outside of a warehouse off of the Redwood highway. We had been driving, listening to music, and doing H straight for the past five days. The air was cool, moist, smelling of salt and the musty smell of redwood bark. The sun set and the night fog began to roll around the trunks of the trees. I thought they looked like giant dinosaur legs. We were crouched behind one of them. Lee held up a small six-shooter.

“Alright. I’ve got it on good authority that they have stored the other Icons in here after I pulled my little Captain America stunt. You just follow me and be careful. Who knows what insidious terrors Dr. Benway has left here to guard his treasures.”

We walked swiftly through the mist to the great iron door of the warehouse. Lee checked the bolt. It was locked. He pointed the gun at it and fired twice. The lock fell with a muffled clang. Lee threw open the door and did a little armed forced lunge inside, holding the gun aloft. It was dark and I followed quietly behind him. It was impossible to see anything in the shadows of the cavernous building.

“Lee I can’t see shit.”

“Shh!”

We walked in deeper. As our eyes began to adjust to the darkness we began to notice that the warehouse was not only dark, but also empty. There was nothing inside but some scrap metal and a flattened box that had probably once been inhabited by a hobo.

“Lee something don’t feel right at all. The H is screaming in my blood, do you dig?”

‘Kid I swear if you don’t…”

The light snapped on and Lee whirled about in terror. We heard footsteps all around us. Somewhere the great iron door slammed shut and the sound of a new lock being clicked into place shortly after. Men in white medical gowns, the kind that are open and the back and show a mans bare ass to the world, began shambling toward us from all directions. They dragged their feet heavily across the ground and their eyes were glazed like they had not been used in centuries. The H pushed through my sight, making it true momentarily. I saw light, bright crystal light emanating from the men like smoke, and rise in tendrils into the dark abyss outside. It looks like the Scylla of marionettes. The H clicked off and the men were shambling around us.

“Shit,” Lee screamed, “INDs!”

“What?”

“Irreversible Neural Damage, their Benway’s finger puppets.”

Lee fired wildly into the crowd of shambling men until his gun is merely clicking uselessly. They closed in. I felt hands grasp at me. I tried to beat them off but there were too many. I was lifted off the ground, hundreds of hands holding me rigid. Lee was screaming, his shouts getting softer and softer.

“No, Benway will kill him, KILL HIM! NO!”

He faded to silence and the darkness took me over.

William S. Burrough, writer of Naked Lunch, the professor of nightmare and chaos through prose. Of the beat group he was an elder, having come from a life of crime and drugs. There was not a chemical substance that did not pass through Burroughs system at some time. Drugs were a path to enlightened experience, and Burroughs was on the forefront of that philosophy. He was also a notorious pedophile, and lived a time in Mexico where the boys and the weed were cheap. When I read Naked Lunch I didn’t think I could get through it. It was laborious to try and sift through the torrent of sticky, rambling prose for some semblance of story or purpose. But I suppose that was the point. It kept me awake some nights by how displaced it made me feel. It was the closest I’d come to feeling like I’d gone insane, had lost control and was drifting into space.

New York-2010

“And both my parents met in San Antonio.” David is saying. He and Fitz are walking down a dark suburban street in Bronxville, heading toward Fritz’s apartment. It is five in the morning and all the parties have ended. They both have been doing coke all night. “This was after my dad transferred to Stephen F. Austin. He had to work all through his college career because his parents had spent all the money they had saved for college tuition on his older brother and he had fucked up big time. So my dad, who walked away from a full music scholarship to pursue business had to do it himself. That’s why I feel like I have such a big debt to them, you know?”

Fritz kills his beer and chucks it into the night. It clatters somewhere and is silent. He says, “Yeah, I guess I understand that. But can I give you a piece of advice?”

“Sure.”

Fitz wipes his nose on his leather jacket and coughs. He asks, “You want to be a writer, correct?”

“Of course, that’s why I’m at this college.”

“Well then get out of the fucking womb, man.”

David kills his beer and chucks it. “What do you mean?”

“Listening to the Saga about your family history and dynamic, not that it wasn’t beautiful, and I will steal bits and pieces from it mind you, but you need to get some fangs, man.”

“I don’t get it.”

Fritz pauses a minute. Then he says, “It’s like On the Road. When Jack road that he wrote about his whole gang, as well as his mother. But he wrote about them as the people they were, not the friends or artists they were. He used his scalpel and carved a beautiful portrait of them all, including all of their ugliness. When you talk about your parents, they’re still your source of morality. They’re still your gods.”

They reached Fitz’s apartment. It was really just a house that rented out rooms on the top floor. David and Fitz stood on the stood. David said, “I’m not sure I can ever take a scalpel to my parents, man.”

Fitz says, “You’ve got to become an individual.”

There was a pause. David could still feel the cocaine pulsing through his body. The sun was beginning to come up and everything was gray and devoid of color. He felt like the world had developed tow identical selves, a doppelganger, and he was standing somewhere in between both of them. Fitz puts a hand on David’s shoulder and says, “There are no gods for you, kid.”

And then he’s gone and David is alone in the grey light of the predawn world.

New York-1954

When I opened my eyes I was I was alone. I was sitting in a chair. I looked around. I was in an office of some kind, surrounded by bookshelves. Out the window was an unfamiliar landscape with buildings that looked like they might be apart of a university. It was still night. I got up and walked to the door. It was locked. I cursed and began pacing around the office, questions flooding my mind. Where was Lee and what happened to him? Where the hell was I? But the worst one: Was I in one of Benway’s insane hospital wards, about to be strapped to a table and operated on with rusty tools?

I heard footsteps coming from the hallway and froze. They stopped right outside of the door and I heard keys jingling. I looked around the office in a desperate attempt to find something to defend myself with, but could find none. The door opened.

The man that walked in did not look as I had expected. He was an older man with a grey mustache and neatly combed hair. His tweed jacket has elbow patches on them. He adjusted his large spectacles and extended a hand to me. He said, “Good afternoon.”

I didn’t take the hand. I looked at him nervously. I asked, “Who are you? Where are we?”

The older man walked past me and sat in a chair opposite the one I had woken up in. He took of his glasses and looked up at me. He said, “It is not important who I am or where we are. You have a purpose and it is to be fulfilled in this office momentarily.”

I took a step back and said, “Are you Dr. Benway?”

The older man smiled and said, “I suppose you could say that.”

I sat down numbly. I knew it was hopeless. I asked almost as an after thought, “What are you going to do to me?”

Benway smiled, “Help you fulfill your purpose. Just sit and be patient. It should be long now.”

I could do nothing but sit and wait for my fate. It wasn’t long before I heard more footsteps coming down the hall.

New York-2010

David is walking to Joe’s office. It is late in the evening and there seems to be no one else on campus. David slept all day and missed all of his classes, only to awake and find he has missed the suns entire circuit. He feels like shit, with a pounding head ache and feeling that all his dopamine has left his body. He is lost and needs to talk to Joe, to try and figure everything out.

He opens the door to the building where Joe’s office is located. All the lights are off but David finds his way down the hall to his professors door. David can see light coming from underneath the door. He thinks this is strange. He knocks.

Joe’s voice says, “Come in.”

David turns the knob and walks through the door.

The Confrontation

David walks through the door of Joe’s office and is confronted with a being he has never seen before. The person, kid looking much like himself stands before him wearing strange, outdated clothes. His eyes are bloodshot and he is grossly skinny. But there is a fire dancing above his head like a little candle.

Joe says, “I was expecting you son.”

David asks, “What is going on here.”

Joe says, “You have found your way back here to the beginning, now its time to understand why you left in the first place.”

David is about to speak, but the kid before him speaks first.

“You…you’re an Icon.”

David is taken aback. “What are you talking about?”

The kid moves closer and reaches out to touch David. David flinches back. The Kid says, “You’re a Holy Icon. I can see it all around you, the light. It’s magnificent.”

David’s head is whirling. He says, “Joe, what is going on?”

Joe smiles and says, “I don’t know, you tell me.”

David explodes, yelling, “I don’t fucking know! You had me read those goddamned books and my whole world went upside down and nothing made sense anymore. I’ve been going crazy for the past couple weeks and I haven’t learned a god damned thing! You know what I did last night Joe? I did enough cocaine to kill a small elephant trying to understand these literary prophets and all I found out was that I have to kill my parents if I ever want to write. Those writers were all about chaos and I’m fucking through with chaos. I don’t know who I am anymore. I feel like a child again.”

David opens his eyes. The kid is gone. There is only Joe standing in front of him looking somber. He says, “I believe the word you’re looking for is reborn. Another word for whole.”

David is stunned. His mouth yammers, unable to form words. He falls to his knees. Joe takes of his glasses and sighs.

“Class dismissed.”

The Frog

2010-04-01T23:40:00.000-07:00

The Basement

I opened the door, sending a shard of light down the basement stairs. The damp air hit my face, smelling of filth and putrefaction. My parents had left for work twenty minutes ago, and I was supposed to have gone to school five minutes ago. But I had other responsibilities.

“Hey,” I hissed as I made my way slowly down the stairs. There was a wet smacking against the cement floor of the basement and a gurgling sigh. I had a bundle of beach towels under my arm. The darkness of the basement was impenetrable. I hissed again, “It’s time.”

There was a sickening, wheezing growl. It took me a moment to realize it was the sound of weeping.

To The Sea

I rolled down the window of my older brother’s car and lit a cigarette, merging into the fast lane of the highway. James hated it when I smoked in his car because he said it smelled like an ashtray afterwards, but I never listened. I took pleasure in smoking on the highway, watching the plume of smoke being sucked through the gap between the window and the doorframe, banished, as if it had never been there. Highway 280 stretched out between golden hills and I pressed on the gas, passing slower cars easily. I wasn’t sure why I was driving so fast; I was in no rush to reach my destination.

I was sweating from the summer heat, and the smoke from my cigarette made my throat dry. I was pale. I had not seen the sun in several months. After several minutes the dryness of my throat became too much. I wanted to get a bottle of water and careened over to the right lane and took the next exit. A voice came up from the back seat.

Where are we going? We need to reach the sea before sundown.

The voice was low, almost a whisper, but it had a slithering volume that could not be ignored. I said, “Chill out, I’m just getting some water. It’s not even noon yet, we have at least six hours before sun set.”

I looked in the rear view mirror and the shape beneath the nest of beach towels shifted and sank lower, emitting a deflating hiss, and for a moment I thought that a beach ball was deflating beneath the towels. Then the voice again.

Be quick.

I pulled into the nearest gas station and turned off the car. “Be quiet,” I said to the pile of blankets. They remained motionless. I got out of the car and stretched, feeling the dull ache in my muscles from driving abate slightly. The drive to Half Moon Bay could be a tiring one, depending on the company one has.

I walked into the gas station and bought a large bottle of water. I’d been getting thirstier lately, and considered quitting smoking because it only made me drink more. Instead I bought another pack of Marlboro Reds and handed the attendant the money and walked out.

Another car pulled into the gas station, a car I recognized. The car was James’s best friend’s in high school. The driver got out, a skinny red haired kid with freckles, and a thin brown haired girl. I don’t remember his name, but I knew her name. Miranda.

I tried to get to the car before they saw me, but Freckles saw me and yelled, “LITTLE STOKES!”

He jogged over to me, the sun reflected off his par of sunglasses like great burning pupils in the center of his red face. Miranda walked slowly behind him. He shook my hand and said, “Man, look at you. Doing the Stokes legacy proud I hope?”

Miranda came up behind freckles and said, “Hello Conner. You cut your hair.” I somehow found her reserved nature more offensive than Freckle’s frat boy enthusiasm.

I ran a hand through my short hair absently and said “Hey, Miranda. What are you guys doing out this way?”

Freckles put a hand on Miranda’s back and said, “Oh we’re just going to the city for dinner tonight, down to Fisherman’s Wharf. Got a random craving for seafood, you know how it is.”

I raised an eyebrow. “So you two are dating?”

Miranda looked down but Freckles grinned and said, “Yeah.”

I leaned on the hood of my car. I glanced inside at the pile of blankets. They were still. I asked, “So is this like a long distance thing, with you at college?”

Freckles said, “Actually no, I’m not going to school, I still live in the area. I’m doing some assistant coaching for the swim team at high school. Speaking of which, how is The Frog? He hasn’t answered my phone calls.”

I forced a grin and said, “James is great, doing the college thing.”

“Is he still swimming?”

I glanced at the pile of blankets. “As much as he can.”

Freckles seemed to find this funny; he laughed and clasped his hands together. He said, “Man, that guy was like a fucking torpedo, man. You should have seen him!”

“I did.”

Freckles seemed taken aback by my cold response, a reminder that I had been at every one of James famous swim meets, that I had been the one to give him the name “The Frog” after his state championship.

Freckles said, “Uh, yeah I know, I Just meant…you know…”

He rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously. Miranda was giving me a glare that made me begin to feel guilty. Freckles said, “Well, I’m going to go in and pay for the gas. I’ll be right back.” He left me and Miranda alone in front of my car.

I looked at her and said, “Next best thing, I guess. Well almost. ”

She crossed her arms and glared, saying, “Don’t do this again Conner.”

I said, “I’m just saying, at least you’ve got goals, you know. Unattainable goals, but goals none the less.”

I lit a cigarette. Miranda made a disgusted face and said, “Oh good you’re smoking now. When did you pick that up?”

I shrugged and said, “Sometime after you broke up with me.”

She let out a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me laugh and asked, “Are you saying that you started smoking because we broke up?”

I shook my head and said, “Not at all, just coincidence. Don’t give yourself that much credit.”

She said, “Well good, I’d hate to be the one killing you. Does James know you’re smoking and driving his car around?”

I shrugged again and said, “He’ll figure it out sooner or later.”

Miranda smoothed back her hair, small beads of sweat hiding just beneath her widows peak, and said, “Well listen, if you decide to come back to school and stop acting like a child we can talk. People are worried about you.”

I flicked the cigarette and said, “Whatever.”

I got back into the car and pulled of the gas station, leaving Miranda standing there, waiting for freckles. As I turned onto the street I looked back in my rear view mirror. The noon sun hung above Miranda, plunging her into her own shadow, making her seem like something insubstantial and ungraspable. The voice from under the beach blankets slithered up again.

Was that Miranda?

“Yeah.”

There was a silence in the car as I drove up the on ramp to the freeway.

I’m sorry.

“Shut up and keep down. We’ll be at the sea soon.”

James’ State Championship Party, 7 months earlier

James pulled up in his car, the car that I loved so much. He and his buddies walked in carrying several cases of Natural Light underneath their arms. James was taller than me by far, and his thick cords of swimming muscle seemed to pulse underneath his shirt when he lifted the cases onto the kitchen counter. Our mother constantly told us that we had the same face, but James had his hair cut very short, almost to the scalp, where I grew mine almost to my shoulders. Mom kept begging me to cut my hair short like James, but I refused. And James had a small tattoo of a frog, limps stretched out in mind leap, on the meat of his right shoulder. He had got it on his eighteenth birthday and gave me credit for the idea.

James tossed me a beer and said, “It’s cheap and it tastes like piss water. But after about six of them you just don’t give a damn.”

His buddies laughed and I chuckled. One of them opened a beer and asked me, “So, is your main squeeze coming tonight?”

I could never be vocal in front of James’s friend. I was scared of humiliating him by saying something stupid. I just nodded. James hopped up on the kitchen counter with a beer, sitting at my shoulder level. He put his arm around me and said, “Miranda is a catch little man, you did good work.”

We all opened our beers and began drinking. James was right, it tasted like foul water, but I managed to choke it down.

Soon everyone from James’s class was showing up and our driveway was congested with cars. Pretty girls in tank tops and short shorts kept running up to James to congratulate him on his victory, hugging him and making sure he got a view down their blouse. I waited for Miranda.

James put a CD in the sound system and everyone spilled into our backyard around our cement pool. Some one had brought several kegs and people were filling red cups with beer. I wandered through the crowd, sometimes getting a pat on the back or my hair tussled, reveling in my brother’s fame. I would never be deified like this, but I would always be related to a god.

Finally Miranda showed up, tank top and short shorts, hugging me quickly and pecking me on the cheek. I handed her a beer.

She looked at me from under her long eyelashes. “Thanks for inviting me, I know James didn’t really want underclassmen here.”

I took her hand and said, “You’re not just an underclassman.”

We danced by the pool. She let me gently rest my hand on her hip just above where the low waistline of her shorts started, the pads of my fingertips grazing the thin band of flesh. During the slow dances she would rest her head against mine, lips centimeters away from my ear. I felt she would whisper honey words at any moment, and wasn’t sure I would be able to handle it if she did. My brother danced, spinning drunkenly with girl after girl around the pool.

Around one in the morning the kegs went dry and every one was drunk. I felt as if I were hovering several feet above the ground. I heard a splash and looked at the pool. James surfaced with a girl he had been dancing with, laughing and clapping along with the music. Almost everyone jumped in after him, splashing almost half the water out of the pool. Miranda grabbed my hand and led me to the edge of the pool, where we jumped together.

Under the water I could see what seemed like miles of kicking feet, some still with sandals, like upside down stalks of wheat waving in the wind. Miranda was in front of me in shimmering waves of blue pool water. Before we could surface she swam close and placed her lips on mine. She winked at me before she swam to the surface and I felt like I could propel myself out of the water like a dolphin with all the energy in my body.

After a while people started getting out of the pool and going inside to dry off and find a place to sleep. Soon it was only me, Miranda, and James left in the pool.

“Where you’re lady friend go?” I asked him. He shrugged and Miranda laughed. He started doing lazy laps across the pool. Even in the dark his lean swimmers figure could be seen. I swam to the edge and said, “I’m going to get us some towels.”

I tip toed inside, not caring about the water trail I was leaving on the hardwood floor. It was James’s party and when our parents got back they would get mad at him, if at all. He never seemed to let anything get in his way of having a good time, be it parents or school. People were sleeping everywhere they could find a place; the couch, easy chairs; people were even curled up on the rug. I had locked my room before hand so I knew I would have a place when I wanted it. I had vague hopes that Miranda might spend the night with me.

I grabbed three beach towels and made my way back outside, trying to be quiet so as to not wake up anyone. I opened the back door slowly and stepped out. It took my eyes several seconds before I saw them. At first I thought Miranda had something in her eye and James was trying to find it. They were sitting on the edge of the pool, their feet swishing in the water. James had his hand placed gently on Miranda’s chin, pulling her face up to his. He was smiling with a kind of humor behind his eyes, almost as if Miranda had just told an amusing joke. Her eyes were closed.

When he saw me his expression didn’t change, he just let his hand drop from her face. She turned and looked at me, smiling too much.

“Thanks Conner.”

“Yeah Thanks little bro.”

I numbly brought the towels over and dropped them at their feet. I turned and walked heavily back to the house, saying, “I don’t feel very good.”

Miranda started to get up, “Conner, wait.”

But I had gone through the door and shut it behind me. I went into the nearest bathroom and locked the door. I fell asleep in the bathtub.

The next morning everyone had cleared out. Miranda had slept in my room and was up by the time I crawled out of the bathroom with a throbbing headache. James was gone.

“Good morning.” Miranda said, her eyes crinkling up with her smile. She kissed my cheek. I didn’t say anything. Her smile faded. She said, “Listen, nothing happened last night I promise. We were all really drunk and James was just joking, you know how he flirts.”

“Yeah, I do.”

She took my hand. “Conner, please believe me.” Her eyes were big and brown and softened me. I was drunk last night. I may have overreacted. I said, “Ok, yeah, I’m sorry I stormed off.”

Miranda made me breakfast and kissed me goodbye when she finally left. A month later she broke up with me. Apparently I had trust issues. And James swam his way to a full scholarship at a very nice school several hours away. But his shadow stayed behind.

The only phone conversation with James at college

James: Hey Little man, how’s it hanging?

Me: James! I haven’t talked to you in months, man, how are you?

James: I’m good man, I’m good.

Me: I think Mom might be around, you want me to try and find her? She would love to hear your voice.

James: No, no it’s fine. You know mom, if I started talking to her now I’d be on the phone until next week.

I hear the sound of him sniffling and taking a swig of something from a bottle.

Me: I guess. Are you alright? you sound funny.

James: Oh I’m just a little drunk, trying to take the edge off, you know?

Me: James, it’s a Tuesday night. And it’s only seven.

James: It’s the beauty of college man, drunk every night.

Me: Who are you with?

James: Uhh… No one right now, but I’m trying to find some one willing to sneak into the gym and go swimming with me later tonight.

Me: Dude, you shouldn’t go swimming when you’re drunk, it’s dangerous.

James: Everybody needs a little danger in their lives, man, or they turn into everybody else.

Me: What are you talking about?

James: Never mind.

Me: Ok…umm how are classes?

James: They’re…they’re tough actually. It’s a lot harder than high school you know, each classes assigns an ass ton of homework and papers and stuff. And the swim team is really competitive. I mean the guys here are good, like really good. Sometimes I think…well…they’re just really good.

Me: That sounds pretty heavy.

James: Yeah. Well listen, I’m sure you’ve got stuff you need to do…

I cut him off. I don’t want him to leave.

Me: Not really. I mean, I already did most of my homework.

James: well, I should still go.

Me: Alright…

James: It was good to talk to you little man. Keep it real.

Me: Can’t wait for summer dude. Let’s get really drunk, yeah?

James: Ha ha sure thing.

Me: Cool.

James: Oh, and Conner.

Me: Yeah?

James: Don’t tell Mom and Dad I called.

Back to the Sea

The sun was making its way to the horizon. I lit another cigarette and rolled down the window. The air smelled heavily of sea salt and pine. The pile of beach blankets in the backseat had begun trembling.

Please hurry. I can’t wait much longer.

I steered the car around the winding roads, getting closer to the sea. I said, “We’re almost there alright.”

I got onto Highway 1 and the ocean exploded along the horizon like a long grey arm. A joyous sigh came from the back seat. I looked for an entrance to the closest beach. I was thankful that I barely saw any other cars on the road.

I turned down a gravel road lined with fleshy Ice plants, the purple blossoms in bloom. The coast grew closer.

James never came home from college once he left. He rarely phoned. It was almost as if he had swum off the face of the earth. After a while my parents started to get a little worried, but my father believed that he was just having a good time and would call when things settled down. James had never been in a low spot in his life. We all thought that he would come back one day and take up his old revered place in our family. But I was the only one who witnessed his return home, and it was not the glorious parade we had all expected.

I drove the car onto the beach, almost up to the waves crashing on the sand. I got out of the car. The beach was foggy and cold. I couldn’t even see a mile past the shore. The sun was simmering down to a deep red. I went to the back door of the car.

I was nothing like James. Awkward, moody, un-athletic and unpopular I always resented growing up in his shadow, but I truly did love him. Even after he caused the end of my only high school crush, I still wanted to be him. I would have done anything for him.

I opened the back door of the car. I pulled the beach blankets off and stepped aside. His first two flippers made contact with the sand almost cautiously, the grains sticking to the slimy webs between his toes. His eyes, bright neon green with a vertical black slit, looked at me with trepidation. I nodded encouragement. His secondary, clear eyelid, blinked once to remove an unseen particle from his eye. He stepped out with his other two webbed limbs, pulling his lean, oval body onto the sand, squatting with his knees almost to his ears, which were now flat opaque disks. His skin was a dark hazy green, speckled with brown and black spots, smooth and moist to the touch. He had thrived well on the insects in the basement. On his front right limb was a patch of stretched, warped ink that had once been a tattoo.

He grinned a toothless grin and let his tremendously long tongue run over his rubbery lips. He made two hops towards the ocean. I closed the car door and he looked back. I didn’t think frogs could cry, but his eyes did shimmer.

Thank you Conner.

I only nodded. My voice was gone. He had always had a talent for taking it away momentarily. At swim meets he blew everyone away and at home he commanded the dinner conversation, always making my parents laugh along. Everyone expected him to do something great as soon as he left home. Even I did.

He made it into the first wave with one more powerful leap and then his long legs and webbed feet propelled him out to sea.

Like a fucking torpedo, man.

After several minutes I could not see him anymore. He had disappeared into the red horizon. I got back in the car and turned it around. My mouth was suddenly dry and I was terribly thirsty, but I pushed the desire away as I drove on. At highway 1 I considered taking a right and driving straight on to Oregon; never looking at the ocean again. But I knew to do that I would have to turn away from it and forever walk sideways like a crab. It would always be there.

I turned left and began driving home. Mom and Dad would eventually come to terms with their quiet tragedy and life would go on as it always had. As I reached the main land I felt the sun come out from behind the heavy fog, like a bulb escaping the veil of the lampshade, and warm the back of my neck. A solemn peace settled somewhere deep inside of me. I loved my brother, but I was not him. One day, I would leave this place and make my own way in the world.

It was only after this thought that I allowed myself to pull over for a bottle of water. And it tasted great.

Happy Cows -Rough Draft

2010-02-12T16:24:00.000-08:00

I let Jack drive us around with a broken arm because of his new car. Though it was
really his fathers, a red vintage 1970’s red convertible Mercedes Benz, he let us drive it around. We couldn’t figure out how to take off the cover, but it was still a smooth feeling riding around in the passenger seat. The car had an antique radio with tuning knobs and the little red arrow that traveled along the stations. The seats were leather, but the springs had weakened so when you sat down you really sank into the chair and it was a chore to get back up, almost as if the car was begging you to sit and stay a while. The car was antique, but it made more sense to Jack and I than its predecessors, with their seat warmers, individual climate control, surround sound, DVD player, and GPS. The little go-carts running off corn juice, humming down the highway. They were all steel cells that might as well have auto pilot, they were nothing you could really drive. But this sleek, red survivor of the wild seventies wasn’t just a ride, it was a real car. Like so few things in rich suburban America, this car had our respect.

Jack was a short guy with a tan, handsome face and quick, witty personality. He was half Argentinean and most women were instantly attracted to him and his goofy sense of humor, although he never seemed to be as interested in them as they were in him. They always felt comfortable around him, as opposed to me, skinny white kid with adolescent peach fuzz on his face and nothing to say. When I made headway with a girl, it was like lightening striking the same place more than once.

Jack and I liked to speed along Highway 280 and watch the beautiful Californian hills open up before us, home to shaggy and dumb looking cows. Often there would be a joint between us. We kept the windows down as to not infuse the interior with the smell of weed. Jack would exhale, hand me the joint and say as we passed herds of cows grazing, “Dude, this is why happy cows are in California.” Then he would laugh and cough simultaneously, smoke trailing out his nostrils.

It was summer and we were both home from college with nothing but three months of sun ahead of us. All our other hometown friends were abroad for summer programs or on extended family vacations to Greece or Italy. We were the only ones home. We both got simple summer jobs. Jack got his old high school job as an Applebee’s waiter. I was always trying to be different, so I got a job working for a psychic. It was a little building on El Camino next to a used car dealership with a neon sign in the window that read Psychic. The proprietor was named Madam Fortuno. She was a middle aged woman with dark hair and heavy mascara. When I went in at the end of May to ask about a job she was sitting at a table reading Cosmo and smoking a cigarette. Her voice was quiet and she spoke with a light Italian accent. We talked for several minutes and I explained what I was looking for. She raised an eyebrow at me. She had probably never had anyone ask her this before. She asked, “You wish to get job here? For all of the summer?” I nodded. She agreed to pay me a reasonable compensation for my assistance through out the summer. I didn’t get to read people’s fortunes or anything, I mostly just made appointments when people called in and managed Madame Fortuno’s taxes. I still had hopes that I would see something that would make the surface of my cramped little reality shatter, or at least ripple.

When I told Jack about it his jaw actually fell open and he asked, “You mean people actually make appointments for those kinds of things? That is so stupid Kevin, like really, that is really stupid. If you want I can get you a job down at Applebees, at least you’d be around normal people.”

I said, “Right, ‘cause fry cooks on meth and stoned ass high school kids are a normal crowd.”

Jack just rolled his eyes at me. He was usually right about how things worked in the real world while I entertained my own impossible fantasies about it. Jack was studying business and I was an English major. Our friendship never made sense to us, but we never questioned it.

At night we would drive the Mercedes up into Portola Valley, a maze of winding streets through dense trees that made me think of the Blair Witch Project. There was an Arbor Nursery nestled into a hillside and we would park halfway up the gravel driveway, hidden in the shadows. While I drove Jack’s beautiful car, he would sit next to me and operate on a swisher, supplanting the tobacco with chronic that he always had an ample supply of. He liked the peach flavored swisher, but I always requested that we get the grape flavor. Jack always laughed and said, “Get you’re black ass out of my car.”

The Arboretum bumped up against the large hillside that was bisected by highway 280, the one roaming with cows. The land was huge and fenced in with barbed wire strung on rotten planks of wood. Jack said that the land was owned by Stanford University, but I was skeptical. I didn’t think that those types of shut in scholars had the necessary skills to own such land. The could hardly through a party, let alone herd cattle.

We parked the car and hiked up through the rows of infantile trees, trying to be as stealthy as possible. We knew there were dogs somewhere among the sleeping barn houses and greenhouses; we had heard their barks before. The rows of trees in the dark scared me; their symmetry was eerie and ominous. Jack loved it. He always saw the good in a situation. Even when he broke his arm skating the first week of summer, he sat up off the asphalt clutching the battered limb and said, “Well, at least I’m setting some kind of record.” He had broken that same arm three times before, doing similar things. Jack and I shared many interests, like skating or snowboarding, but he was much more daring and passionate with them than I. I preferred to encounter danger in books or movies. I had never broken a bone.

Early in the summer on one of our late night hikes up Stanford’s cow hill, we discovered a lake. It was hundreds of feet long and at least three stories deep. Near the right shore there was a cement tower with feet markers along its side. The lowest one read twenty two feet, when the water level was lowest. Jack said Stanford used this lake for scientific research. “What a boring school,” I said, ‘They study water.”

It took us ten minutes to walk around the perimeter of the lake, but it was a beautiful walk. You could see a stretch of highway from the dirt road around the lake, and beyond that the giant Satellite Dishes pointed to unknown destinations in the stars. The lake became our prime smoking spot.

The night before I started work at Madame Fortuno’s, we trekked through the rows and trees, hopped the barbed wire, and made our way up the hill to the lake. Jack cradled the grape blunt he had rolled in his hand as we went. It was a clear night and we could see a shower of stars, too many to try and point out constellations. The hills of Portola Valley opposite us twinkled with the lights of houses embedded in the forest. Jack lit the blunt and I could smell the deep green smell of weed beneath the grape of the paper. He exhaled and passed it to me. He said, “Man, I am really digging this lake right now. I can see every ripple. Fuck, I dig this entire hill.”

I coughed softly and said as I passed the blunt, “I start work tomorrow.”

Jack laughed and said, “You mean your job with that Psychic bitch?”

“She’s pretty nice.”

“Kevin, she scams people out of their money just so she can look at their palms and say ‘I see a bout of feverish masturbation in your future’. She’s not quite mother Teresa.”

I snorted with laughter and my nostrils burned. He was right I knew, but somewhere I hoped that she might some how be the real thing.

Suddenly we heard movement. Twigs snapping and the sound of dry grass being crushed underfoot. Jack’s eyes got wide and I knew we were both thinking dogs. We looked up the bank of the lake and saw several huge, bulky shadows perched at the top. They swayed and jostled the dark, and I guess it was the weed that prompted the idea that they were giant demonic dogs, hounds from hell. I waited for their eyes to glow red and for them to swoop down and carry us off to the realm of Hades. Then one of them let out a low moo. The rest of them followed, mooing down at us. They were cows, the same cows that during the day would have fled from the sight of us.

Jack started whooping with laughter, trying to suppress it with his hands as to not wake the owners of the Arboretum. He grabbed my shoulder and said, “They’re cows man! Fucking cows! They’re god damn happy fucking California cows!”

I didn’t laugh. I still found their dark mooing shadows terrifying. I said, “This is a bad omen.”

Jack hit me on the arm and said, “Shut up man, you don’t start work ‘til tomorrow.”

Work proved to be dull. I sat at a desk in the cramped lobby of the building and greeted people as they came in. I was never needed in the back room, the dimly lit cavern where Madam Fortuno laid out tarot cards or read peoples palms by candlelight. I spent a lot of my day playing solitaire on the computer. The few people that did come in where regulars. They arrived precisely at the same time each week to seek guidance from the other realm. I guess punctuality scored brownie points with the spirits.

On Mondays Fred Turner came in at 3:45 still wearing his short-sleeved oxford shirt and wrinkled tie. He worked as a used car salesman in Mountain View, and he was not a very successful salesman. I guess that’s why he managed to fork out 120 dollars an hour to let Madame Fortuno predict the currents of sales for that week. On Tuesday Sarah Jenkman came in, a house wife from Los Altos who spent her days cleaning and re-cleaning the nice house that her husband had paid for while he worked late into the night at some investment firm. Sarah had no children and I guess the void that most normal neglected house wives would fill by having an affair or starting a bridge club, Sarah filled by consulting the spirits. We chatted when she came in. She would say, peering at me over her large, expensive sun glasses, “Oh I remember my college days, I had such fun. It’s the best time of your life young man, enjoy it while you can.”

I always nodded and said I would, focusing more on that one god damned ace of spades that I couldn’t find to win my game of solitaire.

Thursdays and Fridays were usually pretty empty, but Wednesdays were my favorite days. Wednesdays were Carly Freeman’s day. She was a young woman about my age with shoulder length brown hair that she always let fall where it may around her freckled cheeks. She didn’t come in to see Madam Fortuno herself; she drove her grandmother there every Wednesday around noon.

The first week when she came in she led in the elderly woman with a long dress, holding her arm gently. When she saw me our eyes locked for a split second and I felt my face grow warm. She was beautiful like a freshly painted pastel, she was to be admired but not touched or she would be smudged by the oil and filth of the spectator’s fingers. She was not to be owned. At least not by me.

Then she broke the silence and said, “Umm, we have a 12:00 appointment for Freeman. It’s under Greta Freeman.”

I looked at the calendar and saw the name. I said, “Uh, yes I have you right here. Umm, I guess just sit down while I grab her.” I got up and tripped over the legs of my chair trying to get out from behind the desk.

Way to go, casa nova, I thought to myself.

I walked passed the back room and into Madame Fortuno’s office. I knocked and came in. She was lying on her couch smoking a cigarette with her eyes closed and the blinds shut. She said that working by candle light all day made her eyes hurt and she would have to lie down for several minutes through out the day to keep from getting migraines.

I said, “Excuse me Mrs. Fortuno, but your 12:00 is here. Greta Freeman.”

Madame Fortuno sighed and took another drag from her cigarette. She said, “Tell them I will be out shortly.”

I went back and said, “She will be with you in a moment.”

The young woman nodded and smiled. I managed to smile back. After a few moments she said, “So I haven’t seen you here before. Did you just start?”

I nodded and said, “Yeah, summer job.”

She raised her eyebrow and said, “Kind of an odd place to get a summer job, don’t you think?”

She didn’t seem to find it odd in an unattractive way. She leaned forward, resting her chin in palm, as if she were watching a mildly amusing film. I decided to just go with it. I made a little prayer to the spirits just in case.

“I guess I’m just an odd guy.”

She smiled and asked, “Oh really?”

I shrugged, “It’s what my friends tell me.”

She laughed and brushed a strand of her hair out of her face. It fell right back where it was and I suppressed a grin.

The old woman looked up at me suddenly and said, “Your face is clouded with darkness. How can you possibly see what is to come with such a cloud around your face?”

Her eyes were milky but intense, as if she were looking at me through a thick pane of glass. As if, to her, I was in a glass cage. Carly looked embarrassed and hissed through her teeth, “Gran! Stop that!”

She looked up at me with a pained look and said, “I’m sorry, don’t mind her, she doesn’t mean half the things she says. She’s not all there.”

I shrugged and said, “Don’t worry about it, Madam Fortuno has predicted much worse about before.”

We both let out a forced chuckle. I knew that what the old lady had said was nonsense, but it stuck in my mind like a splinter. It made me unnerved.

Finally Madame Fortuno came in and rescued us from the awkward silence. She led Greta into the backroom. When they were gone I looked back and said, “I’m Kevin by the way.”

She smiled and said, “I’m Carly. It’s nice to meet you Kevin.”

The next week I managed to ask her to lunch after her grandmother went in. She accepted and we went down the street to a small Japanese restaurant. I got the chicken teriyaki and she got fried rice. It became a regular thing, us going to lunch while Madame Fortuno and Greta consulted the spirits together. There was no trace of the awkwardness of our original meeting. Carly was a very pleasant person and easy to talk to. She told me all about herself. She worked at the small bookstore down the street and had a wonderful knowledge of books. We had very similar tastes. The most important thing I learned was that she was single.

After a few weeks I asked about her family. She calmly explained that her parents had died in a car crash when she was young and how her Grandmother, Greta, had raised her.

My jaw dropped and Carly gave me a look and said, “I know I kind of just dropped that on you, but there is no sense in dancing around the truth, it only makes it harder. I own my tragedy, not the other way around.”

I asked how she was dealing with her grandmother. Carly sighed and said, “She started to loose touch when I was about sixteen. It wasn’t anything serious at first. It wasn’t normal dementia; she still knew who I was and where we were and everything. She just started to act funny. She claimed that she could see ghosts and spirits and stuff. She didn’t talk about it much at first, but it gave me the creeps when ever she did. By the time it came time for me to go to college she couldn’t take care of her self, so I stayed home and took care of her. I’m not bitter, I owe her everything. I’m just sad for her because part of me thinks that she’s seeing these things not because of dementia but because she’s getting closer to death.”

I held Carly’s hand and told her she was a good person. I felt stupid because I had nothing else to offer, no other comfort, no gems of advice. We were on two seperate planets with light years of different experiences between us. To me it seemed that her planet was like Jupiter, made of swirling storms and no solid ground to stand on, while mine was more like the pock marked moon, simple and bare. I thought about the large Satellite Dishes across the highway, trying to navigate impossible distances through space, and suddenly felt that it was a miracle that I could reach across the table and hold Carly’s hand.

Jack usually picked me up from work on Fridays in the Mercedes, still wearing his Applebee’s uniform and waving his casted arm through the open window. I got in the car and he asked, “Meet any ghosts today?”

I said, “You have no idea.”

We went and got dinner at some taco joint and then went to a gas station and picked up a grape swisher. I rarely saw my parents because they had given up trying to have me home at a decent hour. Jack’s had never really tried.

We went to the Arboretum and hiked up the shadowy hill to our lake. The cows were waiting nearby and followed us to the edge of the bank, mooing softly. I thought about bringing Carly, but I never did. I somehow saw her as above pot. She had so much to escape from but from what I could tell she led a sober life. It was us who had nothing to run from who decided to escape anyway.

The sky was clear but there was no moon, so everything was darker. The tip of the blunt burned into my retinas, making red and purple spots on the perfect black surface of the lake.

“I met a girl at work.”

Jack coughed and asked, “Is she a psychic?”

“No, she’s a client. Sort of.. We’ve had lunch a couple times.”

Jack had nothing to say and I knew that it was too early for his keen social senses to pick up the scent of this relationship. We smoked the rest of the blunt and wandered off into the night.

The next week of work was pretty uneventful. Fred Turner sauntered in at 3:45 in his short sleeves and khakis, grinning ear to ear. He nodded at me and said, “Good Afternoon sir.”

I raised my eyebrow and asked, “Good day Mr. Turner?”

“I sold five cars today. One was a mini van. Even got the extended warranty on some of them too. Madame Fortuno is always right.”

“What did she tell you?”

“She said that I have a lot of straight lines in my palm which means I have an honest personality. She said that all I had to do was show it to people, and my sales would go up.”

He gave me a grin that showed one of his gold teeth. He had a piece of spinach stuck in-between it. I forced a grin and said, “Way to go.”

Sarah Jenkman came in with hysterics, claiming that she had seen a ghost in the broom closet. As she sat in the waiting room, fanning herself, she said to me, “And you know the funny thing is, it looked just like my mother.”

On Wednesday Carly came in as usual. She bounced up to the my desk with this excited look in her eyes. She looked like someone had changed her battery. She knelt down to look me in the eyes. I tried very hard to not look down the collar of her shirt. She asked, “What are you doing this weekend?”

“Uhh, nothing. Nothing at all. Not even a semblance of something.”

“Do you want to go to a fair with me?”

“What?”

“There is a fair in Half Moon Bay this weekend. You know, they set up rides and games and cancerous foods. “

She put her hand over mine gently.

“Come on, it’ll be fun. I’ll buy you a churro.”

“Alright. That sounds great.”

She smiled and said, “Great. Now lets get some lunch. I’m starving.”

I told jack that I would be going to the fair with Carly on Saturday. He shrugged and said, “Cool dude. Have fun.” I couldn’t tell if he was disappointed that he would have to smoke alone that night or not. He had the best poker face I knew.

That night I had a nightmare. I was standing by the lake all alone. The moon was full, so full is seemed pregnant with a ghostly light. It spilled out of its pores and illuminated everything. I could hear mooing but I couldn’t see any cows. I saw a figure standing off and I walked towards it. It was hunched over something. I could see the shoulder blades and the sides of the arms moving and working with a terrible insectile detachment, as if every body part were moving of its own accord, like a greasy machine. I got closer and saw that it was digging. I saw bones laid out before it. Suddenly it turned around. It was a horrible creature with clawed hands and grey mottled skin. It had no face, only a discolored skull topped with broken twigs of grey hair. It had no eyes, only eye sockets. It opened its tongueless mouth and Greta Freeman’s voice came out.

“You’ve still got that cloud on your face, boy. Here, let me help you.”

I hear splashing and turned to see herds of cows crawling out of the lake. They were decaying, heaving, horrible creatures that dragged their broken and fetid carcasses up the muddy banks. Their boney jaws clicked at my ankles. I turned back to the monstrous ghost of Greta in time to see a horrible black thundercloud erupt from her mouth like smoky vomit, headed straight for my face.

I didn’t tell anyone about my dream, especially not Carly when I picked her up on Saturday in my less-cooler-than-the-Mercedes Honda civic. She got in and gave me a quick, over the center consol hug and we were off. Her neck smelt sweet when I hugged her, and the smell stayed with me.

The drive to Half Moon Bay was beautiful, winding past redwoods, Seqoia trees, endless fruit fields, and eventually the crashing sea. The fair was set up in the huge parking lot for seasonal pumpkin store, only open in the fall months. The fair had plenty of room to set up its many rides. There was a moderate sized crowd that day, mostly families but a few other people in our age range. It was thankfully devoid of the crowd that wore wife beaters and jeans that hung around their knees, the kinds of people you see regularly at theme parks.

We started by eating a funnel cake between us and drinking two large lemonades.

“It’s protocol,” Carly said, “To eat as much junk food as you can before going on these rides.”

We started with the Ferris wheel because I wanted to get a view of the ocean. I felt like the sun in a purple metal cage, rising up out of and falling back into the grey expanse of ocean. I suddenly thought about the undead cows crawling out of the lake. I scoured the ocean to look for disturbances that might be submerged monsters, but I only saw waves.

Carly poked me playfully in the ribs and asked, “Where’d you go, Frowny Face?”

I laughed and said, “Sorry, I just zoned out for a second.”

Carly smiled, Her free willed hair was blowing in the cool breeze coming off the water, laying gently against her face like thread. Something about the symmetry of her smooth face, neat little teeth and chaotic hair seemed eternal. I was having nostalgia about this day and the way she looked in the little purple cage with me even before it was over.

We went on every ride they had and I spent almost forty bucks on the strong man hammer. Carly kept hitting it higher than me and I kept calling for a rematch. We ate our fill of junk food. She kept eyeing the roller coaster in the center of the fair. It was called the West Coaster and it was constructed out of what looked like shoddy metallic tracks that rose and fell much like the ocean behind it. There was one huge loop rising out of the center where the speeding cars somersaulted above the crowd.

Finally Carly grabbed my hand and began pulling me towards the roller coaster saying, “Lets go ride that, I think we’ve done everything else.”

I let her pull me about halfway before I stopped. She turned to me, smiling with one eye brow raised.

“What’s wrong?” She asked.

I kicked at the concrete with the sole of my shoe, scuffing it. I said, “I…uh…don’t think I can ride that.”

“Why not, you have a heart condition or something?”

“No. I’m…just…”

I felt my face reddening. I sighed and said, “I’m afraid of roller coasters.”

I expected Carly to laugh or shrug and go with out me, but instead she just kept looking at me and asked, “Why?”

I didn’t understand. “What do you mean why? I just am.”

“There has to be a reason why.”

The words fell short in my throat. I only shrugged. Carly eyed me and said, “Well that’s a dumb reason.”

She didn’t say the words with any hint of vehemence or mockery, but they still stung. I felt my face grow even redder. I said, “Well you can ride it on your own then.”

I turned and began walking away. I was more embarrassed than I was mad at her. I was also ashamed that I had ruined what might have been a very good date. I felt someone grab my hand and I turned around. Carly was there with her beautiful symmetry and I felt my shame deepen.

She said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. I usually don’t think before I speak and it gets me into trouble. I didn’t mean it.”

I sighed. “But your right. It is dumb. I’m scared because I’m petrified of taking risks. I’ve never broken a bone in my body, you know, and I’ve never been on a roller coaster. There are so many times when I just want to dive head long into that ocean over there and let the current take me, but I just can’t. I just don’t have the faith and it terrifies me.”

Carly smiled at me and grabbed my hand. She began pulling me towards the roller coaster. She said, “No time like the present. Trust me.”

And, somehow, I did.

It was dark when I drove Carly back. I followed my headlights over the winding roads out of Half Moon Bay. I parked outside of her house and turned the car off. The windows of her house were dark. I leaned back and said, “I can’t believe I didn’t puke after that ride.”

She laughed and said, “That’s charming Kevin.”

I laughed and turned to her. It was dark in the car and I could only see her silhouette and the splashes of moonlight across her face. I said, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For today. For the roller coaster.”

“Oh that was nothing. Tomorrow I’m going to take you base jumping.”

I laughed. A silence fell in the car, and a sense of propelling gravity pulling me toward Carly. In the dark I heard her move towards me in her seat. I reached out and my hand touched her hair. I could smell her sweet perfume again and it almost made me dizzy. I closed my eyes and kissed her. After, she laughed and kissed me on the tip of my nose. I put my hand on her face and she placed hers over mine.

Behind her I saw a light snap on behind one of the windows. She saw it and said, “ Oh shit Gran’s up. I should go. I’ll see you later?”

I nodded. She kissed me on the cheek and was gone.

I was in Jack’s room the next day, laying on his bed. He was playing X-box on his TV, sitting at the foot of the bed. I listened to the sounds of gun fire on the TV. Jack’s room was a small room but nicely furnished, with a large computer and neat desk. He had a drum set in the corner with a pillow in the hollow of the bass drum to muffle to sound. The walls were adorned with posters of bands that he’d seen live, some with me. A black eyed Brad Pitt stared at me from a poster of Fight Club.

I said , “So I went on that date with Carly yesterday.”

“Mother fucker!”

“What?”

“Not you, this Nazi keeps shooting me with a sniper rifle.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, so you went on a date with Carly. How was it?”

“It was really good. We went to the fair in Half Moon Bay. I went on my first roller coaster.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Nazis shoot you again?”

“No, you’re a son of a bitch. How many times have I tried to get you to go on a roller coaster with me. Remember that time in eight grade when we all went to Great America we argued with you for over an hour, trying to get you to go on Top Gun with us? And now you finally go because some chick gives you stiff dick syndrome.”

I heard a knock at the door and looked up to see Jack’s dad standing there. He smiled and said, “Whose got a stiff dick?”

Jack’s father was where Jack got his Argentinean tan and cool attitude. He wore a vibrant oxford shirt and khaki shorts. His curly hair was pulled back into a tight pony tail.

Jack said, “Kevin does. He bailed on me the other day to be with some girl from work.”

I sat up and said, “Hello Mr. Alonso.”

He smirked and asked, “Was she at least cute?”

I nodded and said, “Very.”

He laughed and said, “Alright boys, I’ll see you later.”

Jack resumed shooting Nazis and I laid back down. After a moment Jack said, “You son of a bitch. We’ve got to get, like, at least twice as stoned tonight to make up for yesterday.”

I laughed and said, “I believe we do.”

The next Wednesday Greta Freeman came in two hours earlier than usual. And she came in alone. I looked up from the computer to see her stagger in, supported by a black cane I had never seen before. Her bloodshot eyes were locked on me. I stood up and went over to her.

“Mrs. Freeman are you alright? Where’s Carly?”

She recoiled when I reached out to help her. Her eyes were wide and full of a dark energy. She said, “Don’t put your hands on me boy, I know where those hands have been. I know the ways of men in this world, corrupting innocent young girls and filling them with lechery.”

It took me a moment to understand what she was talking about. I said, “No no no, you have it all wrong. I’m not like that. I…Carly and I…I promise you it’s not what you think. Listen, let me call her so she can come get you.”

I tried to reach out to her again but she recoiled and raised the cane like a shield. She hissed, “Don’t lay your hands on me boy! You’re cursed! Something furious and hungry is coming for you. Very soon.”

I managed to get her into a chair and I got out my cell phone to call Carly. It took me several tries to dial her number right because my hands were shaking so bad. She answered the phone in a groggy voice. Wednesday was her day off and she had slept in. I told her about Greta and she cursed and hung up. Thirty minutes later she walked in with her hair in a rats nest and a bewildered look in her eyes. She went over to Greta and said, “Gran! What are you doing! You can’t drive, you know that, you could have killed someone, or hurt yourself.”

Greta just stared forward not responding. Carly fished the keys out of the pockets of her dress. She came over to me and hugged me tightly. She said softly, “Thank you so much. I owe you big time.”

She stepped back and I took her hand in mine. I said, “No you don’t. Do you want me to help you take her home?”

Carly shook her head and said, “No I can do it. I need to call the doctors and have them come take a look at her. She’s going to need more medicine I think. God, I hope the insurance covers this. Did she say anything weird to you?”

I paused. I studied her face and saw lines of worry etched around her mouth. I decided to spare her and told her no. She sighed and nodded her head. I helped her get Greta to the door. Greta didn’t flinch at my touch this time and simply shuffled across the floor outside. Once we got outside Carly said, “Thanks, I got it from here.”

She started to walk down the street with Greta. She paused, let go of Greta’s arm slowly, making sure she was steady. Then she ran back and kissed me quickly on the lips. She thanked me again and quickly ran back to her grandmother. I was thankful she hadn’t seen me blush.

The rest of the day I was distracted and irritable. I couldn’t even play a single game of solitaire. Greta had always made me nervous, but that day she had scared the shit out of me. The words furious and hungry bounced around my skull like thunderclouds. I wasn’t surprised when lunch came along and Carly didn’t show. I wasn’t hungry anyway. I remember hearing about the Furies in a literature class in high school, ancient Greek spirits of vengeance that would descend upon offending characters in Greek mythology. My teacher had described them as horrible, disfigured beasts with oozing sores and black fluid dripping from their fanged mouths. They tore their victims limb from limb. It took me a long time to get to sleep that night.

By Friday I was feeling better. I had talked to Carly and she said her mother was doing better and that the Doctor only prescribed a stronger dosage of the medicine she was already taking.

Jack sent me text messages all day. The first one said You and I have an appointment with Dr. Blunt tonight do not be late. The second one said we gonna fly like an eagle to the sea. He sent me vague drug references all day that made me snicker to myself until I started to get excited for our trip to the lake. Jack was in one of his wilder moods, which always meant a good time.

When work got out I quickly said goodbye to Madame Fortuno and jogged to my car. I was buckling my seat belt when my phone rang. It was Carly. I answered, “Hey.”

“Hey there. What are you doing?”

“I just got off work and I was going to head home.” I said, trying to avoid telling her that I was running off to smoke weed with Jack.

She said, “Listen, can you come over?”

“Now?”

“Yes. I’m lonely and having a bad day. Can you come over?”

I thought about Greta’s wild eyes. I said, “Is your Grandmother ok? I don’t want to disturb her.”

“She’s fine, her new dosage makes her sleep a lot. She won’t even know you’re here.”

I thought about Jack and said, “Well my parents hate it when I come home late and wake every one up, so I don’t know how long I can stay but I can definitely…”

She cut me off saying, “Oh its fine, you can sleep over.”

I was speechless for a few seconds. Carly asked, “Kevin? You there?”

“Uh, yeah I’m here. Are you sure?”

“Yeah I’m sure.”

“Alright, I’m on my way.”

I hung up and called Jack. I told him the situation. He said, “You mother fucker! I went out and bought an eight just for tonight! You’re going to abandon me now?”

I said, “Sorry man, duty calls.”

“Well I’m going with out you. And I’m going to smoke all of it. All of it, you got it? You’re not getting stoned until I’m not high anymore, and that shouldn’t be for at least a week with the shit I got.”

I laughed and said, “Alright man, you have a good night. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, yeah. Have a good night bro.” And he hung up.

Carly let me in the front door wearing pajama bottoms and a Belle and Sebastian t-shirt. I could see the tan band of her midsection and my heart leaped. She hugged me and I could smell her sweet smell. She said, “Thanks for coming. Come on in.”

Most of the lights in her house were out as she led me down a dim hallway. There were pictures on the wall of her and her grandmother where Greta looked happy and sane, with kindness instead of wildness in her eyes. There was a picture of two younger people, a man and woman in wedding clothes.

“Who are they?” I asked, pointing at the picture.

“My parents at their wedding.” She said,. She took me by the hand and led me down the hall to the room at the end where light was seeping under the door. It was her room.

She had a large bookshelf across from her bed that was packed with books. I don’t think I could’ve fit a magazine between them they were so packed together. She had a laptop sitting on the carpeted floor near the outlet playing some soft acoustic song. The whole room smelled like her and it was dizzying. She said, “Take a seat, I’ll be right back.”

I sat on her bed and she slipped back out of the room. There was something about the whole room that seemed soft and inviting. I took off my shoes and socks and felt the carpet with the ball of my feet. The room seemed nude, intimate, like the soft band of flesh exposed by Carly’s shirt. I was very aware of the condom in my back pocket.

Carly came back in and closed the door. She moved with grace. She came over to me and I looked up at her. She leaned down and kissed me. My hands ran up her hips to her ribs, and then around her back. She pulled back and said, “Come sit on the floor with me, I want to do something first.”

We both sat down and I noticed she had something in her hand. I gave her a look and she opened up her hand. It was a small, red pen knife with the swiss army cross on the handle. I raised my eyebrow.

“You’re going to kill me?”

She laughed and said, “Maybe. Depends of whether you trust me or not.”

“I do.”

“Good.”

She opened the small blade and said, “I was thinking about what you said, at the fair. About not having faith. Tonight, I’m going to cure you.”

I said, “Is that right?”

She nodded and said, “Tonight, you and I are going to become blood buddies.”

“How is that going to help me have faith?”

“Because when you become blood buddies with someone, its one of the most intimate things you can do. You saying that you’re willing to take what ever I am into what ever you are, and vice versa, no matter what is inside of you. And you have to have faith because after this I’ll be in you forever. It’s almost more intimate then sex, but not as fun.”

I looked at the blade. It looked small but lethal. And I never liked blood. Carly put her hand on my knee and I looked up. She asked me again, “Do you trust me?”

I took Carly’s hand into mine and said, “I do.”

She smiled and grasped my finger softly. There was a moment of pain, then she made a small incision on her own finger. She held them together inside the palm of her other hand. She leaned over and kissed me while our blood mingled between us. After a minute she let go. I looked at my finger, smeared with blood. I smiled.

Carly went and got band-aids and patched us up. She said, “Just tell people you cut it on a coke can.”

I laughed and said I would.

“What do you want to do now?” I asked

She got up and said, “Well now that we’re blood buddies we don’t need to have sex, so we might as well go to bed.”

I felt my heart drop but tried not to show it. It didn’t work and Carly burst into laughter as she sat on the bed. She said, “I’m kidding! You should have seen the look on your face. Get over here.”

I laughed and went over to her and said, “You’re a terrible liar.”

She said, “You’re worse,” and pulled me down onto the bed.

My phone rang early the next morning and I sat up naked in Carly’s bed. I saw that it was my mother and I answered it, thinking that she was mad because I didn’t come home last night.

I answered saying, “Hey mom, listen I…”

But I didn’t get to finish as my mother burst into tears on the other end. She sobbed, “Oh thank God you’re alright, you alright, your alright! I thought you were with him!”

I tried for several minutes to ask my mom what was going on, but she was unintelligible with weeping. Carly touched my arm, concerned.

“Mom, you’re going to have to calm down and tell me what’s going on.”

“Its…It…Oh Kevin, I’m so sorry. It’s Jack.”

“Mom, what’s wrong with Jack? Is he ok?”

“I don’t think so sweetie.”

The details were hazy because it happened late at night. The owner of the Arboretum woke up in the middle of the night because he heard someone scream and kick over a potted tree, shattering the pot. He went outside and saw a young man running through his trees towards the road. He told the police that the kid looked like a bat out of hell, running and yelling. Before the owner could get a shoe on he heard a car ignition and the screeching of wheel on the dirt road. He said that the kid looked scared to death.

The person driving the van that hit the red Mercedes speeding down the road said that they had a yellow light and were rushing to catch it. They caught it and ran head first into the passenger side of the Mercedes, flipping it upside down on the side of the road. It all happened in the blink of an eye, the man said, the Mercedes was just going too fast.

When I got to the hospital Mr. Alonso and Mrs. Alonso were standing outside of the hospital room. Mrs. Alonso was in a night gown and looked as if she had been there all night, and her eyes were swollen and red from crying. Mr. Alonso was holding her around the shoulders. His hair was hanging around his shoulders, gray and wavy. I thought distantly as I approached that I had never seen him with out his trendy pony tail. Now he just looked like a scared old man holding his wife.

When Mrs. Alonso saw me, fresh tears rolled down her face and she hugged me saying, “Oh Kevin dear.”

Mr. Alonso could only grasp my shoulder and clench his jaw to keep from crying. I said that my parents were in the waiting room if they needed anything.

“How is he doing?”

Mr. Alonso spoke. “He stable but unconscious. The doctors aren’t sure…They’re not sure how extensive the damage is.”

His jaw wavered. I suddenly couldn’t stand being with them anymore. I asked if I could see him. They nodded.

When I saw Jack I felt sick to my stomach. He face was black and blue and he had a tube sticking out of the corner of his mouth. Both arms were in casts and he had a brace around his neck. A blanket covered the rest of his body, but I knew it wasn’t any better. Everything felt so fragile, like he was made of glass. I didn’t touch him, not even go near enough to. I sat in the chair next to his bed and listened to the EKG beep. I remember my mother telling me that the Arboretum owner had said that he saw Jack running away from something. I was confused and distressed and couldn’t think of what Jack might have been running from. It couldn’t have been the cows, he thought they were hilarious, and the higher he got the more he would laugh at them. I had no idea.

I suddenly remembered Greta Freeman’s words, Something furious and hungry is coming for you.

In my shock I realized that Greta was right. I was cursed and the Furies had risen from the core of the earth and had been waiting to tear me apart and carry me off last night at the lake. Only I didn’t show up. Jack did.

I rushed into the hospital bathroom and vomited in the toilet till I couldn’t breathe.

The next week went by in a blur. The doctors managed to repair most of the broken bones and they prevented any internal bleeding, but Jack still did not wake up. The knock to his skull had caused a minor fracture and they said all we could do was wait.

I quit my job with Madame Fortuno. I told her what happened and her eyes looked sympathetic. She touched my shoulder and said, “This thing could not have been foreseen.”

I wanted to tell her that it had been and that I was the one who was supposed to be in a hospital bed, or worse. But I just drove home and never saw her again.

Every morning I would drive to Jack’s house and help out his parents with work around the house, to give them some time to rest and pray. I took out the garbage, did the dishes, swept the back porch, and sometimes made them breakfast if it looked like they hadn’t eaten. They didn’t know it but I felt responsible for Jack’s accident, and doing these chores felt like small steps towards penance. There were times that I wanted to confess to them, to drop to my knees before them and say “It was my fault; I was supposed to be with him that night but I left him alone and vulnerable in the dark and what ever came after him was meant for me.”

I began spending every night at Carly’s house. We would lie on the couch and watch a movie or television and she would run her fingers through my hair, trying to soothe me as I lay in her lap. Greta no longer had any outbursts around me, she just shuffled around with a cane, blank eyed and wobbly. Her job was done; she had warned me of my would-have-been fate.

I never told Carly how I was feeling but she could sense it anyway. She said one night, “Kevin, you can’t blame yourself. The only difference it would have made if you had been with him that night is that you would be in the hospital too right now.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t sleep very much at night and my eyes were raw from watching the TV. I turned my face into Carly’s thigh and sighed. She told me to look at her. I looked up. She had tears in her eyes. I was shocked out of my stupor momentarily. I couldn’t believe that someone who had known so much sorrow could manage to feel it again on behalf of someone else. She held up her index finger where a thin red scab ran down the tip. She asked, “Do you trust me.”

“Yes.”

“You can’t let this own you.”

I didn’t say anything. Carly placed a hand on my face. It was cool and felt good against my hot cheeks.

She said, “I love you Kevin.”

Later that night, I rolled over and looked at Carly’s clock. It was almost three in the morning. She was curled up next to me, breathing softly. I resumed staring at the shadows dancing on the ceiling, swirling and grinning wickedly at me. I felt fear slithering somewhere in the pit of my stomach, uninvited and impossible to banish. A voice deep within me asked What if it’s still out there? What if it’s still crawling through the field sniffing the air for your scent, wallowing in the mud stinking and waiting? How long before it comes for you here, right in the bed of your lover? What if you’re not here again?

I sat up and said quietly out loud, “Fuck that.”

I pulled on my clothes and snuck out of Carly’s house and down to my car. The night air was much to cold for the summer, but I didn’t feel it. I was filled with something so strong that my jaw was clenched tight to shatter my teeth. Something inside me was going to rip its way out. I realized that it was anger. No. It was fury.

I drove to the Arboretum, but parked a ways down the street in case the owner was keeping vigil since Jack’s accident. I snuck past the dark buildings and up through the rows of trees. The symmetry that had so entertained Jack and so frightened me now seemed to be peeling outwards before me like Moses and the red sea. It wanted me to enter; it was pulling me in.

I leapt over the barbed wire, but the sleeve of my shirt got caught on a barb and I tore at it feverishly, snarling. My shirt ripped and the barb cut a long incision down my forearm. I didn’t even feel the pain as I ran up the dark hill, panting and grunting like an animal. Blood ran down my arm and stained my clothes and the ground with small droplets.

I reached the top of the slope almost crawling on all fours, slipping down the other side in the dirt. The dark lake was ominously still and opaque. There was no moon out, not even stars. It was a perfect night for predators on the hunt. I ran down to the shore of the lake and fell in the mud. I got up, a hulking stack of blood and filth with wild eyes and glaring teeth. I knew the creature was submerged in the lake, waiting. I screamed and ran into the lake up to my waist, splashing like a mad man. The cows were nowhere to be seen; they smelled the danger in the air.

I began punching the water screaming,

“Come on you mother fucker! You want me, COME AND GET ME!”

I could feel the centuries of being prey, from being hunted by the saber-toothed tiger to being condemned by an invisible God, howling in retaliation from within me. There was no more running.

I stopped my shouting and just stood in the water, chest heaving. The sudden silence was almost too much and I felt dizzy. I felt my arm stinging where the barbed wire had cut it. I could feel something moving behind the silence, something dark and slithering, like claws lightly grazing the thin fabric separating the dark realm they had come from and mine. There was a pressure in the air, my ears rang with it and I braced my self for what was coming. There was a terrible roar all around me and I shut my eyes and screamed my final cry.

There was nothing. I heared a low hissing and felt something light battering my head and shoulders. I opened my eyes. I was still alone, standing in the lake. I looked up.

Rain. It was raining.

It came down in torrents, soaking me to the bones. It washed away all the mud and dried blood and just kept falling. There were no Furies lurking in the water. I was still alive. For the first time in weeks I felt relief. I felt clean.

I got back to Carly’s and quietly snuck into her shower. I left my wet clothes on the tile floor. I had left my cell phone in Carly’s room, but my wallet had been ruined in the lake. I put several bandages on my cut arm.

I slid back into bed and Carly rolled over and placed a hand on my face. She whispered, “Hey.”

“Hey you.”

“You smell like mud and wet leaves. Where did you go?”

I kissed her and said, “It was just something I had to do.”

“Are you going to be all right?”

“I think so. I really do.”

It is still summer. I haven’t been back to Madame Fortuno’s, but I know that the spirits are taking good care of her and her clientele just fine with out me. I am still with Carly, and every day I spend with her feels like faith. I don’t know what will happen when the summer is over but I have a good feeling about us. Greta Freeman is still alive and well, but she has ceased to talk, she just sits and looks out the window with her cane in her lap. Carly takes this as a good sign as she is no longer having outbursts.

Jack still hasn’t woken up, but the doctors say that things are looking better every day. I’ve begun going to the Alonso’s house less and less because they need me less as the days go on. They spend a lot of time by the phone. We are all waiting for Jack to wake up.

And it could happen any day.

The Picture

2010-01-25T13:54:00.000-08:00

It was dusk when Mr. Meyers pulled up outside of an apartment complex and parked his suburban as per instruction. After several minutes a man walked briskly out of the lobby, bracing himself against the violent bout of wind that set his grey hair reeling on his scalp. Mr. Meyers saw a slight bulge through the man’s brown winter coat on his hip. The man got into the passenger seat and closed the door.

“You Alan Bright?” Asked Mr. Meyers.

“Yes.”

Mr. Meyers extended a meaty hand to Mr. Bright, who shook it quickly while buckling his seat belt.

“I’m Joe Meyers. Pleasure to meet ya.”

Mr. Meyers started the car and drove on.

“How ‘bout this wind eh?” He inquired. “Only in Chicago do you get this kind of wind.”

Mr. Bright said, “Yes indeed.”

Mr. Meyers said, “I used to run a limo service downtown. Had a rookie driver once who was making a right turn and a gust ‘a wind came and pushed the ass end of the car smack into a light post. Thank god the client wasn’t nobody important or I might have been out a business. I always said, never let a rookie take a big job, they just got bad luck.”

The stoplight up ahead turned yellow and Mr. Bright expected Mr. Meyers to slow down but he kept his speed constant. The light went red and Mr. Meyers coasted smoothly on through. Mr. Bright shifted uncomfortably in his seat. At the next light the same thing occurred. Mr. Bright asked, “Do you mind not running red lights like that?”

Mr. Meyers said, “Don’t worry, I’m a professional. I know what I’m doin’”

Up ahead they ran into evening traffic. Honest men returning home to their families after a hard days work, lonely bachelors crawling back to empty apartments or dimly lit bars to drink alongside the divorced old men that they will soon become. The traffic didn’t seem to perturb Mr. Meyers as he lithely maneuvered his car around slower vehicles. He asked,

“So this guy, is he really a priest?”

Mr. Bright nodded and said, “So I’m told.”

“But you’ve never met him before?”

Mr. Bright scratched the stubble on his cheek and said, “I saw him once at the initial hearing before the trial began, but that was weeks ago.”

Mr. Meyer turned his ruddy face towards Mr. Bright and asked, “But you couldn’t tell he was a priest? I mean, it never came up or anything?”

Mr. Bright shook his head and said, “He wasn’t wearing a cassock, he was wearing a suit. Frank didn’t make any mention of it until now.”

Mr. Meyers made a sympathetic clicking noise through his teeth and slowly shook his bald head over the thick trunk of his neck. He said, “Its just a tragedy isn’t it? Ol’ Frankie was crushed. I mean, its any parent’s worst nightmare. I got two daughters myself, the youngest of which is about the same age Isabella was. I get sick to my stomach just thinkin’ about it.”

He put a hand on Mr. Bright’s shoulder and said, “You’re doing a good thing here Mr. Bright, you know that?”

Mr. Bright looked out the window at the dark streets rolling by. People walked down the sidewalks huddle against the wind in their coats. They looked so vulnerable.

Mr. Bright said, “I wonder how the priest feels?”

Mr. Meyers looked over at Mr. Bright with a dark look on his face and said, “How does he feel? He got acquitted, the bastard probably feels great doesn’t he? I tell you something, a guy who has a history of alcoholism and is charged with vehicular manslaughter doesn’t deserve to feel anything. I don’t give a fuck if he is a priest.”

Mr. Bright sighed and said, “I suppose you’re right.”

Mr. Meyers already red face grew redder as he lifted a hand off the wheel to point at Mr. Bright, saying, “Your damn right I am. There has to be consequences to ones actions. You’d think a goddamned priest would know something about that.”

There was silence in he car. The drove past along side the vast Michigan lake, the dark waters turbulent in the in wind, the frothy fingers trying to reach over and grasp the stone barrier. Mr. Bright remembered a time when he asked his father how Jesus walked on water. Hs father told him that because Jesus was sinless, his soul was light enough the keep his body above the waves. It was sin that made us drown.

Mr. Bright asked, “You religious?”

Mr. Meyers took a breath and said, “I was raised roman catholic but I only go on the big holidays. You?”

Mr. Bright shook his head. He said, “I was raised by my father, and he was very adamant about it. But he died when I was very young.”

Mr. Meyers looked over at Mr. Bright and said, “I’m very sorry to hear that. How did he die?”

Mr. Bright said, “Gunned down by a two bit drug dealer while on a job. He worked for Frank too.”

Mr. Meyers asked, “Did they catch the bastard?”

Mr. Bright looked at the lake again. The waters looked hungry. Bottomless. Like the lakebed was paved with bones.

M. Bright said, “Frank got him.”

Mr. Meyers grunted in approval and said, “Frankie always looks out for his own. He is an honorable man.”

Mr. Bright nodded and said, “I owe him everything.”

Several minutes later Mr. Meyers pulled the car up in front of a modest one-story house. The neighborhood was quiet and the blinds on all the windows drawn shut. The lawn outside was neat and there was a bare tree on the right side, the naked limbs raised in supplication.

Mr. Bright surveyed the house. He asked, “Are you sure he’s home?”

“Frank said he would be. He says to call him when it’s done.”

Mr. Bright said, “I know” and opened the door. He had one foot on the ground when Mr. Meyers put a hand on his arm. He said, “You gotta make him confess first. Aint right to send someone off with out a confession. Even a priest.”

Mr. Bright nodded and got out of the car. He waved as Mr. Meyers drove off. He walked up to the door and tried the handle. It was unlocked. Mr. Bright stepped quietly into the house. It was dim inside as Mr. Bright made his way through the living room. A single couch and wooden bookshelf occupied the room. He guessed that the bookshelf was home made.

The kitchen was less tidy than the living room. Dirty plates stacked high in the sink and the trash in the bin overflowing. There were numerous empty bottles lying about, beer and whiskey mostly. Some still had a little fluid left in them and lay bleeding on the tile where they had been neglected and knocked over.

There was a bedroom with the door closed. Light shown underneath the door. Mr. Bright walked up to it and opened it slowly as to not make a noise. Inside was a small bedroom with a single cot sized bed. Next to it was a desk with a lamp on it that shed a dim yellow light through out the room. Hunched over the desk was a plump old man with wispy white hair wearing a ratty green bathrobe. He was writing something on a piece of paper.

Mr. Bright walked into the room and said gently, “Paul Johnson.”

The old man turned around in his chair and looked at Mr. Bright. His eyes were bloodshot and unfocused; his skin hanging off his face speckled with thin white stubble. His flesh seemed to barely cling to his bones, as if it were trying to flee from him. He didn’t seem surprised to see Mr. Bright, but he asked anyway, “How did you get in here?”

Mr. Bright said, “The front door was unlocked.”

The old man nodded his head said, “Oh yes.” He seemed to lose focus of the room momentarily, but then his eyes latched on to Mr. Bright and he said, “I suppose it was only a matter of time before one of you thugs came for me.”

Mr. Bright went and sat on the bed across from the priest. He said, “I am not a thug. The man who sent me here put me through college. No, tonight I’m more than a thug.”

The priest swayed in his chair and pointed at the piece of paper on his desk. He said, “Do you see that?”

Mr. Bright nodded. The priest continued, “That is my letter of resignation to the archdiocese. I’m not a priest any more, you see? So do what you came here to do and don’t worry about the wrath of God coming down on you.”

Mr. Bright nodded and said, “Not yet.”

The priest slammed his withered fist on the table and said, “What are you waiting for?”

Mr. Bright sighed and said, “It’s been over twenty years since my last confession, Father…”

“I’m not a priest Damnit!”

Mr. Bright held up a hand and the priest fell silent. Mr. Bright continued, “It’s been twenty years and I haven’t been to church once, not since my father was taken from me. I’ve done some bad things father. I’ve killed people. I’ve been involved in organized crime since before I can remember. But I’ve lived my life according to a moral code, and no one I’ve hurt has ever been innocent. I was taught this code by a man who was not my father but treated me like his son. This man, Father, is the father of the young girl you killed with your car on the night of October 12. I will hear you say it father.”

The priest looked into Mr. Bright eyes with his own raw ones for a moment. Then his face collapsed in sobs. His nose began running as he said, “I’m not a bad man, I only ever wanted to love God and to help people. But I’m weak, I’m so very weak. I hadn’t had a sip for over a month I swear.”

The priest got down to his knees in front of Mr. Bright, pleading, “You gotta believe me. It was one mistake. Oh god, that poor girl, she just came out of now where and the street was wet. I couldn’t stop in time.”

Mr. Bright stood up and placed a hand on the priest’s head. He unbuttoned his coat and reached inside. The priest closed his eyes. Mr. Bright said, “This is from Frank Carronni, father of the late Isabella Carronni.”

The priest waited. There was nothing. He opened his eyes and Mr. Bright was gone. On the bed was a brown, square package. Slowly the priest got to his feet and reached for the package and gently tore it open. When the brown paper finally fell to the floor, the priest became to sob again.

In his hand he held the framed picture of a brown-eyed young woman with dark, beautiful hair. She smiled up out of the picture, hopeful for what the future may bring.

With Apologies to Dennis Johnson

2009-12-11T14:18:00.000-08:00

I remember being on the tip of a mountain. The wind and snow was as tumultuous as a raving prisoner. The pines had all been swallowed by the snow and it was impossible to tell ground and sky apart. My head was still sizzling as Patrick stepped into a pair of skis he stole from the top of a family’s car. He looked like a yeti in his big white coat with the hood pulled up and tightened. He took the remainder of the joint out of the depths of his hood, shielding the impossible ember with his gloved hand. He passed it to me and I saw myself take it and breath in. The world was spinning. Patrick always had enough weed or pills to make sure the rotation never stopped. Hop aboard the Gravity Express, he’d say, one-way ticket to nowhere.

I stepped into my stolen pair of skis. I was no longer convinced that I was standing on solid ground. Patrick looked back at me and yelled something. The wind stole his words and took them beyond the mountain range. He disappeared beneath the lip of the trail. I pushed forward and felt the world move beneath me. I was moving, floating like smoke over water. The lyrics to the Deep Purple song surfaced in my mind and I belted them out against the howling wind.

Through the white I saw a shape ahead. I knew it was Patrick; I could see him zig-zaging, showing off his snaking movement. I leaned low and sped up, the wind’s shriek reaching a level of desperation. As I passed him I shouted, full of elation at this wonderful soft world of snow and wind. It seemed I had been tossed like Jonah into the mouth of some frozen beast, and I could feel my faith pulsing through my fingertips. As I passed Patrick, I saw behind his goggles the same look in his eyes, the look of a disciple.

I looked forward to take more of the electric air into my lungs. Something large and black loomed ahead, growing bigger and darker as I approached. My muscles locked up. The pulsing faith in my fingertips moved up my arms and I could feel my cheeks burning with it. I closed my eyes and surrendered to the darkness as the world came crashing to an end.

I am at my older brother’s wedding reception. I must be dead. He just got married to Sarah Jennine, the little blonde waitress with the snaggle-tooth. At thirteen, drunk off stolen sips of beer, it is all I can focus on, a snaggle tooth in a petite white dress. Even though they will get divorced two years later when he finds her in bed with one of the Brewer’s at the Miller Factory where he works, my brother Joe is happy today. He has all his buddies from the factory over to our apartment. They have managed to sneak out a keg and drag it up with them. Everyone is drunk. Joe keeps grabbing me behind the neck the way he knows I hate but secretly love, saying “I wish our parents could be here little brother, I know they would love Sarah like I do. God I miss them.” Joe is drowning in beer, slurring his words. Sarah is drinking and touching everyone too much. Marcus, one of Joe’s buddies from the factory, comes and sits next to me on the ratty couch. He hands me a cup of beer and I instantly like him. He says, “Big day, bud. Your brother is a married man.” I nod and drink the beer he gave me. He says, “You're next big guy” and laughs a laugh that makes his double chin quiver. His greasy black hair is combed to the side, except for a few strands, that hang over his receding hairline. His face is round and babyish. He asks me if I have a girlfriend. I say no. “Ah, who needs ‘em, right? Hey, I have something I wanna show you.” I am confused as he gets up and motions for me to follow. I look for Joe but I can’t find him through the crowd. I am suddenly outside of the apartment building in the Colorado dusk, listening to the jingle of Marcus’ keys as he opens the doors of his two door truck. He says, “Hop in, it’ll only be a second.” I get into the passenger’s seat, feeling the cold through my jacket. He get’s in the drivers seat and closes the door. The friendly air about him is gone and I am shivering from the cold. I know what is going to happen, but I can do nothing to stop it. I can hear the metal clinking of a belt somewhere far away as Marcus says “We don’t need no fuckin’ girls. Look at me when I’m talking you little bitch.” I close my eyes, praying it will all be over soon. I hear Marcus’ seat groan and feel his hand on my thigh, slowly moving upward. Suddenly the door opens and Joe is there, drunk and red with an angelic fury as he pulls Marcus out of the car, his pants down around his ankles. Joe is on him, hitting and hitting and hitting. I am rising, looking down. I want to yell down at Joe, to warn him about everything that is going to happen, but he can’t hear me as my world grows dark.

I was laying on something soft. I was warm and felt safe. My body felt numb. There was a mechanic beeping somewhere near by. I heard Patrick’s high, gentle voice and wondered if the darkness had taken him as well. Then I heard another deeper voice.

“Are you both from the Colorado area?” it asked.

Patrick said, his voice weak, “Yes. ‘bout a mile away. We snuck onto the slope from the backside. Climbed up it.”

Patrick was no longer a disciple. His voice sounded like that of a supplicant, a wretch in the confessional. The deeper voice went on, “You climbed up? Did you not hear the weather reports, you two could have been killed. Hitting a tree is lucky compared to what could have happened.”
Patrick said nothing for a while, then said, “Will he be alright?”

The other voice sighed and said, “He’s got three broken ribs, a broken nose, and some major bruising throughout his chest and stomach, but he’ll recover. He also suffered from mild hypothermia, and had you not brought him in when you did the shock might have done him in.”
The voice excused himself and there was quiet. I felt something over me and could feel breath on my face. I opened my eyes and was greeted with a world rendered in hazy water colors. After a moment the light and colors steadied and took shape and I saw Patrick leaning over me, his winter cap hanging askew on his head and red stubble across his chin, which had been getting thicker. He said, “Morning partner. How them pain killers treating you?”

I smiled to show that they were treating me just fine, but my face would listen to my brain, so I just grunted. Patrick smiled, showing his missing front tooth, his lucky gap as he called it. The story about its origins always changed; the most recent version was that he lost it in a bar fight in Boulder. He likes to say that Boulder is where we both lost the best parts of us, him his front tooth and me my brother Joe. He points out that both of these things were lost due to beer. He got into a fight after drinking too much. My brother threw himself into a brewing vat at work after he divorced Sarah.

“Listen, I know you ain’t doing so hot right now, but we got to get outta here before the Doc comes back.”

I managed to ask why and Patrick huffed and asked, “You got money to pay hospital bills?”
Patrick unhooked the beeping machine and gingerly removed the IV from hand. He looked at the needle for a moment as if he was considering poking himself, but then let it fall beneath the plastic bag.

I had bandages wrapped around my middle and a butterfly bandage over my nose. Sitting up was a painful and slow process. Patrick fiddled near the door, watching for the doctor and tapping his foot impatiently. When I was finally up, Patrick handed me a gray robe and tied the cords gently below my middle. With his hand on my back supporting me, I limped out into the hall. We kept our faces on the smooth tiles as we passed nurses and orderlies. We made our way to the exit and into the bright sunlight of day.

From the parking lot we could see the peak of the mountain we had hiked up. It looked wickedly jagged against the sharp blue of the sky. I asked Patrick if he’d ever seen the Grinch and he told me to shut up and keep walking.

We walked down the road away from the hospital, Patrick sticking out his thumb every time a car drove passed with out success. I asked, “Did you tell them my name?”

Patrick said, “Just your first name. Why?”

I asked, “What if the police are after us? I remember seeing on the news something about a guy who got arrested for sneaking onto closed ski resorts.”

Patrick shrugged and said, “They ain’t got no way they going to find us. All they know is that some good lookin dude and his bashed up buddy made a clean getaway.”
After a while my hospital booties got soaked in the snow and I started to shiver. Patrick gave me his white coat and said, “We should’a tried to grab your clothes, I guess.”

When the pain killers started wearing off, it became excruciating to walk. My sides felt like giant hands were crushing them. The cold air made my nose burn and start to bleed. I held a corner of the hospital robe to it and managed to staunch the flow. I told Patrick about my pain and he pulled a joint from his pocket and lit it, passing it to me. It helped a little but I could still feel the agony fight its way through the high.

“I still feel like I got glass in my sides Pat.”

He reached into his other pocket and handed me a little white pill with a crescent moon on it. He popped one in his mouth and I followed suit. I always waited for Patrick to do things first. He swallowed and said, “I’m running low, man. We got to find a place to stay and take it easy for a while. Maybe find some work, get some dough under our pillows.”

Eventually, just as the sun was setting, a big Suburban pulled over for us. They were a family of four dressed in very nice colorful sweaters and scarves, the two young boys with matching winter hats. The husband, a clean-shaven man with short gray hair said, “Where you men headed?”

Patrick said, “Just into the next town, thanks.”

“What happened to your friend there?”

Patrick looked at me a moment then said, “He’s one of them Santa’s that collects money with the bell. He got jumped and robbed. I took him to the hospital but my car broke down ‘cause the cold front.”

The man looked concerned and said, “That’s just terrible. Well at least it was for a noble cause.”

Patrick said, “The noblest.” He looked at me and winked.

The man’s wife, a thin blonde woman in a white turtle neck sweater, wore a gold cross on a necklace that rested just above the rise of her breasts. She said nothing and kept her hands in her lap. I had the desire to touch the back of her hand and feel the soft, lotioned skin. I imagined it would feel like salvation. I thought of Sarah Jennine on her wedding day. I wondered if Joe was looking for the same thing in her.

The man looked in his rear view mirror at the two boys and said, “Remember boys, WWJD.”
He winked and flashed a white smile. The boys said nothing. The drive was mostly quiet; the boys did not rough house or argue at all, just sat like perfect little mannequins in the dark of the car. I tried to cover the blood stained corner of my hospital gown. I began to have the creeping suspicion that I was riding in a car full of corpses, and that the man with the too-white smile was ferrying me to a terrible destination.

I leaned over and whispered to Patrick, “I’m having a bad trip man.”

Patrick smiled and touched my forearm. He closed one eye and touched the freckled lid with his index finger, tapping it gently as if to say sleep with one eye open, man. I resorted to divining the future from the headlights of cars going the other direction, throbbing like little meteoroids.

Hop aboard the Gravity Express.

The family dropped us off at the first Gas N Go, the husband waving out the window and grinning like a skeleton. Patrick went inside and bought some beer and a bag of chips with a pile of wadded green bills. I was sitting on the curb and Patrick sat next to me, popped the tab of a beer and handed it too me. I sipped it absently as he opened the bag of chips.

“I need to get some clothes.” I said. Patrick nodded but only opened a beer and took a sip. I knew by the way he was drinking his beer that we were going to get drunk and rob one of the small stores in this side of the road town; that we would stay in motel unless Patrick managed to shack up with a woman with a place of her own. We would get jobs either washing dishes or digging ditches, smoke a lot of grass and save the rest of the dough until we had enough to stagger down the road to the next side of the road towns.

But my body hurt, and my soul hurt more. And I was so tired. I leaned back against the frozen concrete and looked up at the sky, black as the sea at midnight. Patrick crushed his empty can, a hollow aluminum sigh. He looked back at me and asked, “Are you alright man?”

I wanted to answer him, to tell him my body had grown too heavy to be lead by my soul anymore, that I wanted to finally have my own bed again, that I missed my brother, that I was tired of riding the Gravity Express. But I was so tired.

So very tired.